brin_bellway | Entries tagged with history

(part 0; part 1)

Just *imagining* going to a rave makes me want to curl in a ball and cry, what even *are* allistics

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I'm glad music nerds exist, they're enjoying themselves and producing valuable additions to mindspace and all that, but I don't expect I'll be remotely able to [keep all these fine distinctions of sub-genres straight] for the foreseeable future, if ever.

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I'd heard *of* Kurt Cobain and Nirvana before a fair bit, but I cannot name a single song of theirs I have heard. I wonder which songs I've heard, if any, were secretly by Nirvana. Maybe I should go listen to their greatest hits and see if any sound familiar.

*heads off to Youtube, armed with list*

[...]

Eh, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" maybe seems *vaguely* familiar (the song, I mean: I've certainly heard the name). Same with "Dumb" and "All Apologies", to a lesser extent. I feel like I may have heard "Lithium" and "Rape Me" used in the backgrounds of movies once or twice.

Huh. Is that it? People *talk* about their music, but never *play* it?

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"Music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.

— Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

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(part 3)

[cw: what it says on the tin, (mild) death, amnesia]

( Read more... )

Current Location: reading the Wikipedia page on the 1990's

Comments on my own posts:

Vocation [three comments]

[cw: drugs, amnesia, maybe medical abuse] The onomatopoeia of breathing

[cw: food] The one about food routines [four comments]

How to Backup Your Dreamwidth [two comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

sigmaleph; in response to

contrarianarchon) Relatively good computer skills; the wonders of virtual machines. [two comments, one of which is new]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

contrarianarchon) How to block the annoying sidebar videos on Serious Eats.

[arguably cw: embarrassment squick] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

argumate) Clever vs obvious solutions.

[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

feotakahari) Foot fetishism vs snake fetishism.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

sanesparza; in response to

rustingbridges) Dream points-of-view.

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Links:

Some selections from old Youtube bookmarks I was going through:

[cw: abuse] [Youtube] (by TL Forsberg) A bilingual music performance.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Youtube] (by Joe Nicolosi et al) A trailer for a hypothetical genre-savvy horror film.

[Youtube] (original by Toby Turner; translated version by

Draazil) The Dramatic Song, as heard from the foreign grandma's perspective. (This one is only funny if you speak Icelandic or--in my case--have already heard the original English version (which is also hilarious in itself, btw))

[Youtube] (by Jordan Taylor et al) How to write a worship song (in 5 minutes or less).

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

( Read more... )

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: nsfw text, gender dysphoria] The one about the distinction between wanting to fuck someone and wanting to be them

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: amnesia, death] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

i-run-a-trash-blog) Canon-compliant backstory for a hypothetical Doctor Who spinoff.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

moonlit-tulip) The effects of being half-awake on dreams.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

fatpinocchio; in response to

jadagul) Browser-autocomplete wrangling.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

sigmaleph) Are we good at computers? Depends on your standard of comparison.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

sigmaleph) A taste of the wonders of Firefox extensions.

[cw: poverty, (arguably) discourse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

feotakahari) On giving advice that some people desperately need and other people are thoroughly sick of.

[mild cw: embarrassment squick] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

contrarianarchon) With great archiving power comes great archiving responsibility. (Update: writing this comment inspired me to go researching web-scraper programs to see if anyone has one without the "must download each useless page and *then* delete it" problem, and it turns out our old friends ArchiveTeam do. I'm testing it out right now, and after the first couple hours of troubleshooting things seem to be going well.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

sigmaleph) In which I offer a bunch of book recs.

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Links:

[none suitable for this section]

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

( Read more... )

[cw: illness, food, (mild) drugs]

( Read more... )

Comments on my own posts:

[fairly mild cw: what it says on the tin] I have an exam in an hour [two comments *if* you count the new-post notification]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

wolffyluna) Exam creation.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

overlordtulip) Some people have one hand for precision and one for brute strength, while others have a single hand dominate both aspects.

[arguably cw: scrupulosity] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

maryellencarter) Customers that do not want to be helped, and staff who are contractually obligated to be helpful.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

wolffyluna) Busman's holidays from university.

[cw: food] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

maryellencarter) Pork-rind flavourings.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

contrarianarchon) Making email addresses robust against providers shutting down or kicking you out. [two comments]

[cw: food] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

rustingbridges; partially in response to

maryellencarter) What to call various Thanksgivings; also, pumpkin pie. [two comments]

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Links:

[cw: amnesia, arguably illness and murder] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by

benepla; h/t

itsbenedict) On our previous roundup, we had ex nihilo fandom memes. This time, we have a story told *through* memes (plus the occasional social-media epistolary).

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Cat DeSpira; h/t

textfiles) The reason behind the characteristic wear patterns on Pac-Man arcade cabinets.

Had to postpone last week's backups because my laptop had enough on its plate, so here is a somewhat larger roundup.

Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

(Note: this post is subject to a formatting glitch. The last post is still last, but all *other* posts in the thread are in reversed order.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

icarian-arts) Today in "memes that came to people in visions": accidental tips on phone customisation.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

femmenietzsche) The social acceptability of the word "bitch".

[Dreamwidth; ~~Wayback crawling forbidden~~ OP apparently later turned crawlability on] (OP by

yvannairie) The complicatedness of musical taste. [three comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

yvannairie) Pokemon Go identity logistics.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

thisismycursed3rdblog; addressing

itsmaledict (Halloween alt of

itsbenedict)) Just how many twists can we put into enemies-to-friends-to-lovers?

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Links:

[FiveThirtyEight; Wayback] (by Ben Casselman; h/t Scott Alexander) As a 25-year-old part-time student in a certificate program at a school that prides itself on its *high* acceptance rate and who has never lived on-campus, I really feel this article.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by

doctorbeth) Adorable stuffed-animal clothing.

[mild cw: war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by

the-battle-lesbian; h/t

consumptive-sphinx) Shaun Keenan does some excellent art of dinosaurs in (relatively) modern contexts.

[BBC News; Wayback] (can't find a byline; h/t Matt Levine) The best roundabouts in the United Kingdom.

[cw: abuse] [The Outline; Wayback] (by Joanna Mang; h/t Scott Alexander) I remember Shakesville, though I was never a regular reader: it was too intense for even 2011!me to handle. (And I say this as someone who was once among the top 5 most prolific commenters on Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.) I disagree with Scott's assessment, though: to the extent that Shakesville strikes me as less terrifying than it did before, it is only because I have since met people whose goodwill is not conditional on staying in the good graces of Shakesville's ilk.

[Raph's Website; Wayback] (by Raph Koster) A postmortem of the MMO Star Wars: Galaxies. I never played it and am not sure I've even heard of it before, but the series is interesting nonetheless.

(although why one would deliberately create a world in which everything decays I do not know; decay is the worst part of the real world and I for one would rather not have it in my escapism, especially not in such a...well, *inescapable* manner)

Laugh rule:
[Sputnikmusic; Wayback] (by SowingSeason)

traits not necessarily suitable for a band that regularly references animals and shouts hey! an average of nine time per song.

(I finally got around to listening to this 2015 album recently. Very solid album, only a couple of duds. (Whereas with My Head Is an Animal I only liked about the first half.) My favourite was "We Sink", because I am predictable and also it is pretty.)

Bonus: a few selections from my recent bookmark-tidying.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by

deird1) The Vegemite Effect. (A memory: "This food tastes of lies," I say, waving around a piece of food from the Chinese buffet when I'd been *told* we were going to a steakhouse.)

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by

thatsnotwatyourmomsaid) Hello, you must have found my camera!

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Chris Witham) Welcoming new zombies to the collective.

[K.B. Owen Mysteries; Wayback] (by James Thurber) Viewing Macbeth through the lens of murder mysteries.

Laugh rule:
[Bandcamp; Wayback (while for *best* results you'll need the audio, Wayback *will* at least get you the lyrics)] (by Brooke Abbey) Let me tell you the story, as sad as it's true...

Comments on my own posts:

An experiment

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

wolffyluna) AO3-tag icons.

[cw: death] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

wolffyluna) New term of the day: "bus test".

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Links:

[New York Times; Wayback] (by Amelia Nierenberg; h/t Matt Levine) Life (in this case, a tomato plant) finds a way.

[Youtube] Good Eats is back, and still great. (Note: this video kicked me out for geo-locking reasons *mid-watch*. I simply turned on a U.S. proxy and went right back, and was able to finish the episode. I look forward to the arrival of other episodes on video-distribution methods I have access to: my TV package† does not include Food Network.)

Laugh-rule entries:
[Youtube] (h/t recommended-videos sidebar on previous entry) Alton Brown sporks (so to speak) weird kitchen gadgets.

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Bret Devereaux)

Also, I cannot, for the life of me, understand what all those leather straps are supposed to be – and I suspect that no suggestion I make will be sufficiently ‘PG’ for this setting!

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†Rogers is so desperate for TV subscribers that they offered us a TV/Internet bundle for $20 *less* than we were already paying them for Internet alone, hoping that we'll get attached and keep it when the promotion wears off two years later. We do not plan to keep it post-promotion, but for −$20/month we'll take it.

"Heather Dale - Joan (with lyrics)" (Watch on YouTube)

"Mordred's Lullaby- Lyrics" (Watch on YouTube)

""Changeling Child" by Heather Dale (with Lyrics)" (Watch on YouTube)

"Heather Dale - Hero (Lyrics)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments on my own posts:

Postscript to phone post

[cw: discourse, ableism, racism] The one about name pronunciation

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

mindstalk) History blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is amazing, go read it.

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Links:

[The Verge; Wayback] (by Josh Dzieza; h/t Matt Levine) Nomads who travel the United States looking for clearance products to resell on Amazon Marketplace.

[The Recipes Project; Wayback] (by Jack B. Bouchard) The history of freeze-dried cod (aka "stockfish", for its resemblance to stocks of wood).

We begin our story in 2012, when a game known as Find the Airport swept Tumblr.

There was (technically, still is) a website called MapCrunch. If you went to MapCrunch, it would display a random spot on Google Street View. You could interact with it in the normal Street View ways: move around, zoom in and out. You could, optionally, have MapCrunch not tell you where the spot was.

In Find the Airport, you set MapCrunch to anonymised-map mode, got your random spot, and attempted to navigate to an airport. (The idea being that you had awoken in an unknown location and had to make your way home.)

While Find the Airport had its good aspects and *was* possible to win (I won once, finding an airport in southern France), the mid-late game was often a long, frustrating slog. While there was always the possibility of finding a neat thing to take a screenshot of and post on your blog (and many did), the fun parts were almost all at the beginning, in which you attempted to figure out from contextual clues where MapCrunch had put you.

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Enter the successor† to Find the Airport: GeoGuessr. In GeoGuessr, you're plunked down in an anonymised bit of Google Street View, and the explicit, site-supported goal is to figure out where you are from contextual clues. When you are ready to guess, you can place a pin on a zoomable world map. The site will then give you a point score based on your pin's crow-flight distance from the actual location.

It's still up to you how much assistance you're willing to allow yourself. Personally, I find it most fun to play by a rule of "I can use everything except other Google Maps tabs". Each round is a hunt for clues, often in seemingly-innocuous things, that I can stick into a search engine or look up on Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a certain gratification in finding that you already know everything you need to know to deduce your location, but playing with assistance is part of how you learn those things you need to know.

There are a bunch of modes, competing against other players or on certain restricted maps, but I haven't tried them myself: I just stick to the classic one-player all-maps mode.

It's a fun puzzle, and a nice way to learn some neat bits of geography and explore places you might never have thought to look at otherwise. And if, like me, you enjoy the puzzle aspect of stalking people but refrain for ethical reasons, you might find this fills a similar mental niche. Bits of Google Map, after all, don't mind if you doxx them. :)

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This post brought to you by playing a game of GeoGuessr and getting within a few kilometres on all five rounds. Take that, rural Australia!

(it also helps that I'm American enough to recognise an outline of Ohio on a state-highway road sign)

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†Although I'm not sure if it was *intended* as a successor, or if it was a convergent-evolution thing.

I have been variously busy and sick, so here is a longer linkspam to catch up.

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Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

buckykingofmemes; response is to

sigmaleph) Zeugma; Tumblr silently fails to display certain formatting under even more circumstances than previously believed.

[cw: cannibalism, fantasy racism] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

oligopsony) Thought of another thing to say about the ghoul worldbuilding.

[cw: poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

theopjones) In which I continue to have feels about Vimes Boot Theory.

[Wordpress; Wayback] (OP by Ozy Brennan; response is to Aapje) Canada can't make up its collective mind about which date format to use.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

ms-demeanor; response is to

rustingbridges) Apparently the business-laptop market became very weird about two years ago, which suggests I have about three to five years before the laptop market I interact with becomes very weird. We'll see. (Maybe the businesspeople on the front lines will take the brunt of it?)

(Also, apparently there are people who *don't* get their personal laptops from the used business-laptop market? There are laptops that are specifically *made* to be personal laptops? Like, I guess I was vaguely aware that this was a thing, but this post--though mostly about business computers--brings it home a little more.)

[cw: discussion of infohazards (but without saying what they are)] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

somnulencelogencia) When someone tells you you're better off not knowing something because it will scar you for life, they're usually right. (To help you make an informed decision about whether to read *this* post: OP specifies which story the infohazard they're talking about is found in (no link, but enough to easily google it), while I do not; I have read the story OP refers to, and the infohazard there canonically *cannot* break the fourth wall.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

sigmaleph) Podcasts and video-game grinding go great together. Podcasts and sufficiently-simple archiving tasks go fairly well together too.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

thedarlingone) Various responses to the responses to some ask memes I sent; the longest bit is about the relationship between temperature and type of clothing worn (and how this relationship seems to often be a lot weaker in other people than it is in me).

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

prosopanonymous; response is to

rustingbridges) The evolutionary origins of prosopagnosia. Addendum here.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

thedarlingone) In which I help track down a link to a translation/joke-explainer. (Some pretty good fic recs in here too.)

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Links:

[Atlantic; Wayback] (by Ed Yong) Fetal nurse sharks swim around within their mother's wombs (yes, there are multiple wombs), and have even been known to poke their heads out.

[Financial Times; Wayback] (by David Smith; h/t Matt Levine) The life of a professional yacht deliverer.

[cw: amnesia] [TextFiles; Wayback] (by Jason Scott) Happy 10th birthday to the Archive Team! (Note: this is the 10-year-old post proposing its creation.)

[Wordpress; Wayback] (by Martin Gregory) Professional trash-picker comes across a collection of photographs from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, showcases them on his blog. Some neat glimpses into the past here.

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Page Summary

History-wikiwalk blogging, part 2
Three pieces of music about COVID-19
Comment and Link Roundup: April 28, 2020
Comment and Link Roundup: April 13, 2020
We'll never forget what you're doing here
Comment and Link Roundup: November 13, 2019
Comment and Link Roundup: October 14, 2019
Comment and Link Roundup: September 10, 2019
That being said, she does do some great stuff
Comment and Link Roundup: July 30, 2019
Casual game rec: GeoGuessr
Comment and Link Roundup: January 18, 2019

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Brinens and Things

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Entries tagged with history

History-wikiwalk blogging, part 2

Three pieces of music about COVID-19

Comment and Link Roundup: April 28, 2020

Comment and Link Roundup: April 13, 2020

We'll never forget what you're doing here

Comment and Link Roundup: November 13, 2019

Comment and Link Roundup: October 14, 2019

Comment and Link Roundup: September 10, 2019

That being said, she does do some great stuff

Comment and Link Roundup: July 30, 2019

Casual game rec: GeoGuessr

Comment and Link Roundup: January 18, 2019