I just listened to a 45-minute lecture about a stick
And I think you should, too. It was a Prehistoric Society lecture about advances in analyzing very ancient wood. Youtube won’t let me copy the URL at a particular timestamp, I guess because it was a live broadcast. You’ll probably find it on their channel with the housekeeping stuff at the beginning trimmed away.
It was about the archaeological dig in Schöningen, Germany, which was a site where humans butchered horses 300,000 years ago. I say humans; she says hominids throughout because they don’t know which of the many early two-legged species lived there.
The site is remarkable because they have found a number of completely intact spear and throwing sticks. Throwing sticks were smaller and pointed at both ends and they think they were thrown overhand like boomerangs. They are capable of killing an animal. I don’t wish to learn how she knows this.
The lecture was about one particular throwing stick (ID 1779) and all the interesting things they’ve learned about it and the interesting methods they used. It’s about 45 minutes.
You can see the Sketchfab 3D model of it here. The model isn’t all that interesting, but I’m determined to post it because had to copy the URL manually from my phone to my computer. It was https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/schoningen-13-ii-double-pointed-stick-b3f2f1267d4a4dd7bd7fd3608f65fec4.
October 16, 2024 — 5:31 pm
Comments: 4
George Floyd: The Game
The games industry is going the way of Hollywood, using exactly the same formula: spending hundreds of millions on projects that swap out men for women, white people for brown people and forget to include any element of entertainment.
I know most of you don’t know from games, but I wanted this image posted on my blog somewhere. For posterity. The latest Assassin’s Creed game is set in feudal Japan, and this is the protagonist.
The story goes it was in development for several years and featured a pair of (duh) Japanese protagonists. Then George Floyd and the BLM riots happened, and they did this. Look at those two faces and tell me this is not George Floyd, straight up.
It’s so much worse than it looks. In released footage, this giant black man towers over waves of little Japanese soldiers, smashing them right and left with a big spiked club (the blood spew animations are impressive), while hip hop music plays.
Reports are they thought gamers would love, love, LOVE this thing. Like everyone was just itching to watch George Floyd get his revenge.
No surprise, everyone hate, hate, HATES it (it was even angrily discussed in the Japanese parliament) and the game company doesn’t know what to do. It’s too late to change it much and too much money has been spent to scrap it, but it’s set to become a hellacious, company-destroying flop. From a company that has had several painfully expensive tone-deaf flops in a row.
And all they had to do is ask some actual gamers to look before they got this far.
October 15, 2024 — 6:39 pm
Comments: 9
Yes, they are mad
Behold, the Teasmade. Yes, it is a combination alarm clock and teakettle. There were many, many models. They used to be very common here, I gather.
Onkle B’s parents had one by the bed for years and years. They also had an electric frying pan in the bedroom “so they could have breakfast in bed.” (No, I don’t really understand how that works, either).
There’s a coffee equivalent.
I love my coffee, but I’m not one of those “don’t talk to me until I’m on my second cup” people. I’ve been awake for a couple of hours before I get my first. The coffee shop on the corner makes mine, a black Americano.
Why I can’t call it an American in England just because espresso is Italian, I do not know.
October 14, 2024 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 3
Dead Pool 180: weathered the storm edition
The dick goes to mossomo with Hassan Nasrallah. According to his Wikipedia article, he was killed while meeting other leaders in a bunker 60 feet below a residential building, though it may have been smoke inhalation rather than the blast that done him.
We will not shed a tear.
Are we all ready?
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
Note: I am woefully behind on dick deliveries. If I owe you one, you’ll know how long. I ain’t gived up, but I haven’t drawn much since lockdown. Some day, your heirs might hear from my heirs.
October 11, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 42
You think Florida had it rough? Pff!
That’s a photograph of my computer screen showing the BBC hour-by-hour forecast this morning. That 2,269 is wind speed in miles per hour. It’s like that for a few days and then returns to normal.
BBC put out a sheepish note saying ‘yes we know we have a problem’ but it’s been 24 hours and it’s not fixed yet. Nobody knows how to drive their software, I guess. The more suspicious among us speculate that there are algorithms in place to tweak the incoming data and one has gone rogue.
I have a lecture to go to later, so this will do for now. All the best for everyone in Florida.
October 10, 2024 — 4:32 pm
Comments: 4
Boo!
I threw a sheet over the two chairs we inherited to keep the cat (pictured) from scratching the upholstery. It didn’t work, naturally.
It’s not the first time I’ve had this thought, but I know – from reading Victorian novels – that rich English people who had more than one home would put sheets over the furniture in the off season. I’m as sure as sure can be that this is where the popular conception of a ghost looking like something under a sheet with two arms raised in the air comes from: armchairs under sheets. Or grandfather clocks or birdcages. Either drafts blowing the sheets around or dark rooms giving the illusion of movement.
It’s too perfect.
October 9, 2024 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 5
I did not know that
Huh. We had a tornado warning yesterday, and I didn’t feel a thing.
Tornadoes in the UK are surprisingly common and no one knows why, according to this article titled Tornadoes in the UK are surprisingly common and no one knows why. In fact, they’re more common than the US, but very weak.
According to this article, the UK has more tornadoes per square mile than any country in the world. Okay, it’s Reddit, but still. Winds here are insane, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
I think we probably have a definitions problem here. Tornadoes don’t show up on satellite, so they don’t count if they aren’t caught by a weather station or human observer. We are very densely populated, so many observers make for more reports. But do you count every swirly and dust devil, or only the big ones?
We get 30 or so a year that are indisputable and strong enough to do property damage. Not yesterday. There were several intense bursts of thunderstorm overnight into morning (including right at the time I usually leave on my bike), but no twisters.
I do hope my Florida peeps are snuggled into a Georgia Motel 6 tonight.
October 8, 2024 — 5:34 pm
Comments: 4
I think I did this right
Tennessee’s absentee ballot is really more of an absentee IQ test. There are 312 numbered ovals. The first 192 are on the other side covering every inch of the card. It’s a terrifying wall of ovals. Then there’s a separate booklet that tells you whose number is whose. The numbers are random. Trump’s was 7.
Or maybe everybody’s absentee ballot is like this? I dunno. I always voted in person in Rhode Island. I seem to remember it was like a picture with a name and a box next to it. Or did we have to finish an arrow? The hardest part was, my polling place was deep in the projects.
Rich Rostrom tells me Nasrallah was mossomo’s first pick, making him the winner of Dead Pool 179. He explained it to me, too, but I’m’a just take his word for it. New Dead Pool Friday.
October 7, 2024 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 6
It’s Friday and I’m all out of chickens
Fortunately, Uncle B sent me this stupid chicken meme.
It amuses me that we can sit at opposite ends of the couch and send each other dumb stuff bouncing off of billion dollar satellites in outer space. Best use of technology.
That’s how the internet works, isn’t it?
We did the long distance thing for 13 years (if I’d known it was going to be that long…). We had to come up ways to stay in communication, with technology that was awfully primitive.
We’re talking, like, 1995. There was no “connected to the internet all the time” in them thar days. We got used to lobbing messages at each other at intervals all day long. It was our normal.
Shall I tell you a secret? Uncle B uses more emojis than a Japanese schoolgirl.
Have a good weekend!
October 4, 2024 — 7:06 pm
Comments: 18
Giant wooden chicken
Holy cats! It’s big. Brick for scale. It’s wood, not papier papier mâché. You can see very old traces of paint on it. Drew Pritchard would go nuts for this thing.
Urban dictionary won’t tell me where the expression absolute unit comes from, but this surely is one.
His parents bought it on a trip to France. Uncle B thinks it’s a shop display of some kind.
October 3, 2024 — 4:48 pm
Comments: 11