nimblermortal

[nimblermortal]

#heck yeah hot dog of all time #much better ratio

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#gosh several of these seem like fun I can't decide

[nimblermortal]

Free Palestine protesters shut down the Golden Gate Bridge and 880 freeway in Oakland. This is huge🫡

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I know I already reblogged this but I'm just agog at how this map shows the focus of the supernatural in the US. There's nothing supernatural about New Mexico. The entire Appalachians can be ruled out, never a murmur of supernatural activity there. New Orleans? Ghosts? Please.

You know what the hotbed of paranormal activity in this country is? CHICAGO.

#I guess the Bible Belt is successfully keeping the devil out of the deep South

[nimblermortal]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #13

April 5-12 2024

President Biden announced the cancellation of a student loan debt for a further 277,000 Americans. This brings the number of a Americans who had their debt canceled by the Biden administration through different means since the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first place in 2023 to 4.3 million and a total of $153 billion of debt canceled so far. Most of these borrowers were a part of the President's SAVE Plan, a debt repayment program with 8 million enrollees, over 4 million of whom don't have to make monthly repayments and are still on the path to debt forgiveness.

President Biden announced a plan that would cancel student loan debt for 4 million borrowers and bring debt relief to 30 million Americans The plan takes steps like making automatic debt forgiveness through the public service forgiveness so qualified borrowers who don't know to apply will have their debts forgiven. The plan will wipe out the interest on the debt of 23 million Americans. President Biden touted how the plan will help black and Latino borrowers the most who carry the heavily debt burdens. The plan is expected to go into effect this fall ahead of the election.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced the closing of the so-called gun show loophole. For years people selling guns outside of traditional stores, such as at gun shows and in the 21st century over the internet have not been required to preform a background check to see if buyers are legally allowed to own a fire arm. Now all sellers of guns, even over the internet, are required to be licensed and preform a background check. This is the largest single expansion of the background check system since its creation.

The EPA published the first ever regulations on PFAS, known as forever chemicals, in drinking water. The new rules would reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people according to the EPA. The Biden Administration announced along side the EPA regulations it would make available $1 billion dollars for state and local water treatment to help test for and filter out PFAS in line with the new rule. This marks the first time since 1996 that the EPA has passed a drinking water rule for new contaminants.

The Department of Commerce announced a deal with microchip giant TSMC to bring billions in investment and manufacturing to Arizona. The US makes only about 10% of the world's microchips and none of the most advanced chips. Under the CHIPS and Science Act the Biden Administration hopes to expand America's high-tech manufacturing so that 20% of advanced chips are made in America. TSMC makes about 90% of the world's advanced chips. The deal which sees a $6.6 billion dollar grant from the US government in exchange for $65 billion worth of investment by TSMC in 3 high tech manufacturing facilities in Arizona, the first of which will open next year. This represents the single largest foreign investment in Arizona's history and will bring thousands of new jobs to the state and boost America's microchip manufacturing.

The EPA finalized rules strengthening clean air standards around chemical plants. The new rule will lower the risk of cancer in communities near chemical plants by 96% and eliminate 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution each year. The rules target two dangerous cancer causing chemicals, ethylene oxide and chloroprene, the rule will reduce emissions of these chemicals by 80%.

the Department of the Interior announced it had beaten the Biden Administration goals when it comes to new clean energy projects. The Department has now permitted more than 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects on public lands, surpass the Administrations goal for 2025 already. These solar, wind, and hydro projects will power 12 million American homes with totally green power. Currently 10 gigawatts of clean energy are currently being generated on public lands, powering more than 5 million homes across the West. 

The Department of Transportation announced $830 million to support local communities in becoming more climate resilient. The money will go to 80 projects across 37 states, DC, and the US Virgin Islands The projects will help local Infrastructure better stand up to extreme weather causes by climate change.

The Senate confirmed Susan Bazis, Robert White, and Ann Marie McIff Allen to lifetime federal judgeships in Nebraska, Michigan, and Utah respectively. This brings the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 193

#us politics

[nimblermortal]

#... This is a show about the supernatural that never once had an episode in New Mexico #further proof that it ain't right

[nimblermortal]

what about out of date boy band fashion? Like, has 2000s or 90s boy band hair because that's what was popular when Lady Catherine was a girl and she has impeccable taste?

okay: this is potentially a hot take from someone who is more familiar with the shows than the book, but I truly do not understand the Mr. Collins redemption tour I've seen over the years, of all characters to blorbify

#replies #Nimblermortal Misses the Point

[nimblermortal]

I remember being in elementary school and feeling a deep alienation at people’s just vicious rejection of mathematics, the reason being, like

It’s like. A classic approach to hypothetical communication with aliens that you start with the things you know you have in common and proceed from there. Mathematics is that.

Imagine you approach someone you don’t understand with a thing specifically designed to be something they and you can agree on as a starting point for communication and they just react with “yeah i hate this”

#getting excited about Shannon's entropy again

[nimblermortal]

it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

[nimblermortal]

"Bug Trap"

[nimblermortal]

This is forty lines of worm poem and not a rick roll.

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

[nimblermortal]

This starts out as a nice gesture, then quickly becomes absolutely ridiculous.

1,024 dice. Man.

#there's a fairy tale about rice and why this scheme is a bad idea #also I like how you can see the transition point between 'that one's pretty oh this is hard' #and 'that is too many dice hard pass'

[nimblermortal]

The way you change your immediate reactions to things is that you catch yourself having an uncharitable/bigoted/overly judgmental thought and you catch it and replace it and then you do that a hundred times a day for your whole life and eventually one day like five years later you realize that you think differently now and you’ll always be working on something but that’s how life goes and that’s fine.

[nimblermortal]

This isn’t even LOTR, I was just in a bookshop skimming Icelandic Saga translations to see how long it would take to find something Tolkien cheerfully borrowed, which was about 15 minutes. Nicknames like this are common — there’s another very similar one given to another man in this saga which stays untranslated in Norse, and basically means wide-walker iirc. But anyway here’s a Strider hiding in Hen-Thorir’s Saga (Hœnsa-Þóris saga).

#I for one think that Strider is from the Gilfaginning but I got a lot of conspiracy theories about the Gilfaginning

[nimblermortal]

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I like to imagine that the Winter Soldier would have been programmed with basically every language that he would need for missions, and, for the sake of versimillitude, his handlers would make sure that he had the appropriate accent/diction and backstory to flawlessly pass as a native of a decently sized city in the country he was working in. So he speaks French like he’s from Toulouse, German like he’s from Cologne etc., allowing him to seamlessly blend in with the locals when he’s out raining destruction across Europe.

Unfortunately, the Red Room – not being known for its commitment to multiculturalism – didn’t think this system through very carefully when it came time to send the Winter Soldier off to do his first ever long mission for their comrades in China. They just program him to speak Mandarin like a statistically unremarkable proletarian from Zhangjiakou and send him on his merry way.

So he arrives in China with his Soviet handler and the following circumstances align to make the entire mission, from the perspective of the Red Room, a disaster from start to finish.

1. It’s 1971, and China is not open to the outside world. Most of the men on the Soldier’s strike team have never met a foreigner in their lives.

2. Those who have met a foreigner have never met one who speaks completely fluent Mandarin with a paint-peeling Hebei accent.

3. This is ENORMOUSLY INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING to everyone he encounters.

4. Instead of being unremarkable and blending in with the locals he gets mobbed by curious spectators everywhere he goes. His strike team, despite being a little scared of him at first, are so excited to talk to a foreigner who they can actually communicate with that they constantly come up with excuses to hang out and chat.

5. China’s relative lack of development in the early seventies means that there aren’t the facilities to wipe him or put him in the freezer, so the main weapons that Handler Dima has at his disposal to keep the Soldier in line are 1. it’ll be hard for him to run away because he tends to attract crowds, and 2. He sometimes looks very ashamed of himself if you give him a sternly worded talking-to.

6. The Soldier is having the time of his life. Look at me, look at all of my friends, I have so many friends, EVERYONE LIKES ME.

The Winter Soldier, doing shots of baijiu and toasting to the health of Chairman Mao. The Winter Soldier, chain smoking and eating millions of sunflower seeds while playing Fight the Landlord with his new pals on a cross-country sleeper train. The Winter Soldier, doing morning tai chi and calisthenics along with his team. The Winter Soldier, preening every time someone tells him that he looks like a movie star (his handler says “They’re just saying that because they only ever see Europeans in films,” to which the Soldier replies, “But Dima, why don’t they say that you look like a movie star?”). The Winter Soldier, showboating shamelessly for his strike team, who have started calling him Lao Da and looking to him for orders while ignoring Handler Dima, who can’t speak Chinese and definitely can’t shoot two people at the same time while doing a backflip. The Winter Soldier, making elaborate Chinese puns and teaching his guys useful English phrases that he can’t remember learning (Did you come here alone, doll?). The Winter Soldier, harassing his buddies until they show him pictures of their wives and kids and then sincerely complimenting them on their beautiful families. The Winter Soldier, suspecting that he has experienced this kind of camaraderie before but unable to remember when and how.  

His next mission, in Vietnam, is the first time that they muzzle him.

#for Tea #mcu #no no I think Steve has to hunt Bucky down in nowheresville China #because Bucky has gone back to live with his friends until he figures his life out #he speaks perfect Mandarin but his dumpling folding is the laughingstock of the town

[nimblermortal]

#*sees question* #*stares in horror realizing I don't know* #*Ontario Sucks starts playing in my head*