clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
I can't rank them between themselves, but these are the most badass Trek women:
Janeway, Seven, Dax (Jadzia), Troi (Lwaxana), Kira, Grilka, K'Ehleyr, Georgiou (Prime, non-mirror), Reno
They did Georgiou Prime dirty, real dirty. I'm happy that we got Yeoh back, but it involved too much Mirror stuff, which is better for one-off sillies than for driving while characters and even seasons.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
"I thought orthopedic shoes wouldn't help ... but I stand corrected"
Michael Vogel
Michael Vogel
Michael Vogel
Azure DevOps ist ja so schlau ...
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
"jacked up on B12"
That's new. And ignores everything about how B12 deficiency works.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
I've been participating in kid's sports day.
It was a lot of sitting, very little participating or sportsing. But a lot of people-watching.
Other classes walk in an orderly fashion, and they have several parents that joined today. Kid's class are chaos goblins from a formation viewpoint when walking together, and I'm the only parent that joined. But they get to where they're supposed to.
Kid's class act both active and mature in their friendship and behavior toward each other, others are more passive and childish. It really stands out, out of fourteen classes, six years.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
Disgust
Ordinary
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
"Pocket
Sign up
POCKET WORTHY
How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive
Thicker ink, fewer smudges, and more strained hands.
The AtlanticJosh Giesbrecht
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Photo by: Nayu Kim / Flickr
In 2015, Bic launched a campaign to โsave handwriting.โ Named โFight for Your Write,โ it includes a pledge to โencourage the act of handwritingโ in the pledge-takerโs home and community, and emphasizes putting more of the companyโs ballpoints into classrooms.
As a teacher, I couldnโt help but wonder how anyone could think thereโs a shortage. I find ballpoint pens all over the place: on classroom floors, behind desks. Dozens of castaways collect in cups on every teacherโs desk. Theyโre so ubiquitous that the word โballpointโ is rarely used; theyโre just โpens.โ But despite its popularity, the ballpoint pen is relatively new in the history of handwriting, and its influence on popular handwriting is more complicated than the Bic campaign would imply.
The creation story of the ballpoint pen tends to highlight a few key individuals, most notably the Hungarian journalist Lรกszlรณ Bรญrรณ, who is credited with inventing it. But as with most stories of individual genius, this take obscures a much longer history of iterative engineering and marketing successes. In fact, Bรญrรณ wasnโt the first to develop the idea: The ballpoint pen was originally patented in 1888 by an American leather tanner named John Loud, but his idea never went any further. Over the next few decades, dozens of other patents were issued for pens that used a ballpoint tip of some kind, but none of them made it to market.
These early pens failed not in their mechanical design, but in their choice of ink. The ink used in a fountain pen, the ballpointโs predecessor, is thinner to facilitate better flow through the nibโbut put that thinner ink inside a ballpoint pen, and youโll end up with a leaky mess. Ink is where Lรกszlรณ Bรญrรณ, working with his chemist brother Gyรถrgy, made the crucial changes: They experimented with thicker, quick-drying inks, starting with the ink used in newsprint presses. Eventually, they refined both the ink and the ball-tip design to create a pen that didnโt leak badly. (This was an era in which a pen could be a huge hit because it only leaked ink sometimes.)
The Bรญrรณs lived in a troubled time, however. The Hungarian author Gyoergy Moldova writes in his book Ballpoint about Lรกszlรณโs flight from Europe to Argentina to avoid Nazi persecution. While his business deals in Europe were in disarray, he patented the design in Argentina in 1943 and began production. His big break came later that year, when the British Air Force, in search of a pen that would work at high altitudes, purchased 30,000 of them. Soon, patents were filed and sold to various companies in Europe and North America, and the ballpoint pen began to spread across the world.
Businessmen made significant fortunes by purchasing the rights to manufacture the ballpoint pen in their country, but one is especially noteworthy: Marcel Bich, the man who bought the patent rights in France. Bich didnโt just profit from the ballpoint; he won the race to make it cheap. When it first hit the market in 1946, a ballpoint pen sold for around $10, roughly equivalent to $100 today. Competition brought that price steadily down, but Bichโs design drove it into the ground. When the Bic Cristal hit American markets in 1959, the price was down to 19 cents a pen. Today the Cristal sells for about the same amount, despite inflation.
The ballpointโs universal success has changed how most people experience ink. Its thicker ink was less likely to leak than that of its predecessors. For most purposes, this was a winโno more ink-stained shirts, no need for those stereotypically geeky pocket protectors. However, thicker ink also changes the physical experience of writing, not necessarily all for the better.
I wouldnโt have noticed the difference if it werenโt for my affection for unusual pens, which brought me to my first good fountain pen. A lifetime writing with the ballpoint and minor variations on the concept (gel pens, rollerballs) left me unprepared for how completely different a fountain pen would feel. Its thin ink immediately leaves a mark on paper with even the slightest, pressure-free touch to the surface. My writing suddenly grew extra lines, appearing between what used to be separate pen strokes. My hand, trained by the ballpoint, expected that lessening the pressure from the pen was enough to stop writing, but I found I had to lift it clear off the paper entirely. Once I started to adjust to this change, however, it felt like a godsend; a less-firm press on the page also meant less strain on my hand.
My fountain pen is a modern one, and probably not a great representation of the typical pens of the 1940sโbut it still has some of the troubles that plagued the fountain pens and quills of old. I have to be careful where I rest my hand on the paper, or risk smudging my last still-wet line into an illegible blur. And since the thin ink flows more quickly, I have to refill the pen frequently. The ballpoint solved these problems, giving writers a long-lasting pen and a smudge-free paper for the low cost of some extra hand pressure.
As a teacher whose kids are usually working with numbers and computers, handwriting isnโt as immediate a concern to me as it is to many of my colleagues. But every so often I come across another story about the decline of handwriting. Inevitably, these articles focus on how writing has been supplanted by newer, digital forms of communicationโtyping, texting, Facebook, Snapchat. They discuss the loss of class time for handwriting practice that is instead devoted to typing lessons. Last year, a New York Times articleโone thatโs since been highlighted by the Bicโs โFight for your Writeโ campaignโbrought up an fMRI study suggesting that writing by hand may be better for kidsโ learning than using a computer.
I canโt recall the last time I saw students passing actual paper notes in class, but I clearly remember students checking their phones (recently and often). In his history of handwriting, The Missing Ink, the author Philip Hensher recalls the moment he realized that he had no idea what his good friendโs handwriting looked like. โIt never struck me as strange beforeโฆ We could have gone on like this forever, hardly noticing that we had no need of handwriting anymore.โ
No need of handwriting? Surely there must be some reason I keep finding pens everywhere.
Of course, the meaning of โhandwritingโ can vary. Handwriting romantics arenโt usually referring to any crude letterform created from pen and ink. Theyโre picturing the fluid, joined-up letters of the Palmer method, which dominated first- and second-grade pedagogy for much of the 20th century. (Or perhaps theyโre longing for a past they never actually experienced, envisioning the sharply angled Spencerian script of the 1800s.) Despite the proliferation of handwriting eulogies, it seems that no one is really arguing against the fact that everyone still writesโwe just tend to use unjoined print rather than a fluid Palmerian style, and we use it less often.
I have mixed feelings about this state of affairs. It pained me when I came across a student who was unable to read script handwriting at all. But my own writing morphed from Palmerian script into mostly print shortly after starting college. Like most gradual changes of habit, I canโt recall exactly why this happened, although I remember the change occurred at a time when I regularly had to copy down reams of notes for mathematics and engineering lectures.
In her book Teach Yourself Better Handwriting, the handwriting expert and type designer Rosemary Sassoon notes that โmost of us need a flexible way of writingโfast, almost a scribble for ourselves to read, and progressively slower and more legible for other purposes.โ Comparing unjoined print to joined writing, she points out that โseparate letters can seldom be as fast as joined ones.โ So if joined handwriting is supposed to be faster, why would I switch away from it at a time when I most needed to write quickly? Given the amount of time I spend on computers, it would be easy for an opinionated observer to count my handwriting as another victim of computer technology. But I knew script, I used it throughout high school, and I shifted away from it during the time when I was writing most."
"My experience with fountain pens suggests a new answer. Perhaps itโs not digital technology that hindered my handwriting, but the technology that I was holding as I put pen to paper. Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it. The No.2 pencils I used for math notes werenโt much of a break either, requiring pressure similar to that of a ballpoint pen."
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
"When it first hit the market in 1946, a ballpoint pen sold for around $10, roughly equivalent to $100 today. Competition brought that price steadily down, but Bichโs design drove it into the ground. When the Bic Cristal hit American markets in 1959, the price was down to 19 cents a pen. Today the Cristal sells for about the same amount, despite inflation."
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
- Sorry, can't join for lunch
Oh too bad, would have been fun.
But also, what a relief, then I can continue working and just have some snack from downstairs.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
"vulcan women are always t'something ... why not name your kid something else"
"because it's t'boo"
-- deep in the comments of STSP
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
@Mans R There is no canon explanation. It seems to be tradition for whatever reason, but e.g. Saavik and Valeris had parents that broke tradition.
Fan theories include:
- Honoring T'Pau (Nimoy's speculation, but as of ENT, T'Pol was named before T'Pau was influential)
- "T' " means "of", and maybe it was originally given when you marry and become of your husband
- The word "t'sai" is "lady", maybe it leaked into names
- Maybe those few not named T'Something were conceived outside pon farr
(information stolen from T'Kay, Vulcartist)
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
@Mans R Out-of-universe: When they made Amok Time there were a couple of Vulcan women in the script. They were named like this, and since then writers are doing it except when they're not.
Any in-universe explanation will be a retrofit, as no Vulcan language and very little lore existed as of Amok Time. It was the first dive into any other Vulcan than Spock.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
Hypolite Petovan
Itโs currently 92 degrees Farhenheit (33 degrees Celsius) but feeling more like 100 (37). Iโm short of breath walking just a couple blocks. ๐ฅต
Last summer was comparatively mild, but this year weโre off to a hot start.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Filing to โpictures that hurtโ. ๐ฐ
โฒ @kingu@mstdn.social:
Hypolite Petovan
To give you an idea about how colossal Generative AI is a waste of time and ressources for everybody involved except the one skimming at the top, my company in the entertainment industry has been vetting or is in the process of vetting 60 different AI-powered tools for internal use. Most are requiring approval, only 4 have been unconditionally approved so far, and 42 need a "strong use case".
Hypolite Petovan
This is stellar reporting and asks a relevant question about how many similar Venture Capital-funded scams are going under the radar because their founder isn't running their mouth off on social media.
โฒ @sandofsky@mastodon.social: It took five years to write, but here's the full story behind Lambda School, Silicon Valley's disastrous foray into for-profit education.
I explain how they burned through $120 million in funding, why Income Share Agreements failed, the crimes committed along the way, and how one developer turned journalist put an end to the fraud.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
Seven parties? Are all of these represented in Parliament? Or am I right in assuming that current Parliament is all Tory/Labour/SNP/LibDem?
bbc.com/news/articles/clddkpy6โฆ
So that's:
- Labour
- Tories
- LibDems
- SNP
- Reform (Brexit/Farage)
- Plaid Cumry
- Greens
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
I'm wrong! Except for Reform, they all have MPs, and these parties do too:
- DUP
- Sinn Fรฉin (but abstain)
- SocDem and Labour
- Alliance Party of NI
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Uniโฆ
That's pretty impressive for a FPTP system. They're all miniscule compared to the top 3 though. All smaller parties together have fewer seats than the SNP.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
I have probably said this before, but I can't get over the idea that someone could make a material that has completely different colors if you shine RGB light on it or if you shine true black-body white light on it.
If somebody made this, where do I put my money? I want a shirt that is red outdoors and green indoors!
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
@Chris Murphy LED lights and fluorescent lights do not emit a nice black-body gauss-shaped spectrum, they emit all their energy on a few narrow lines in the spectrum.
โฒ @clacke@libranet.de: In case it's unclear what I'm talking about, sunlight or a good old lightbulb has a light spectrum that looks like this:
111111122221111111111111111
But an LED light has a light spectrum that looks like this:
000090000000090000000090000
A fluorescent light is not RGB, but it is also made of spikes rather than an even curve, the spikes are just just placed in other places. So you could have a shirt that has three different colors when you view it in white light, LED light and some common configuration of fluorescent light.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
@I am Jack's Lost 404 Yes! Cool term!
What I'm talking about would be a deliberate "metameric failure".
Michael Vogel
Michael Vogel
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
People are calling output from an inbred generative AI trained on a corpus that accidentally includes AI-generated inputs "Habsburg Art" or "Habsburg AI", and I approve.
I didn't expect this to be becoming a problem already.
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
Michael Vogel
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ฐ๐๐
CoPilot is pronounced copy-lot in French English.
Accurate!
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