36 stories
·
1 follower

Voyager Wires

3 Comments and 4 Shares
Also, they're getting increasingly worried that someone will accidentally hit the 'retract' button, and that the end of the cable thrashing around as it winds up could devastate the Earth's surface.
Read the whole story
Fidtz
909 days ago
reply
I think that is about 4 trillon dollars and about 100 billion metric tonnes of #24 wire.
Share this story
Delete
2 public comments
ManBehindThePlan
910 days ago
reply
Should have used fiber!
deezil
910 days ago
reply
17776 - The Sequel.
Shelbyville, Kentucky

Versus Bracket

3 Comments and 8 Shares
Some works didn't make the cut; in "Ecks vs. Sever" vs. the passage of time, the latter seems to have won pretty decisively.
Read the whole story
Fidtz
1828 days ago
reply
"The Volcano" vs "The World" or "The Justice League" or "Marvel", depending on your view of various super powers.
Share this story
Delete
2 public comments
reconbot
1829 days ago
reply
In Predator vs Godzilla I'd put my money on Predator
New York City
alt_text_bot
1829 days ago
reply
Some works didn't make the cut; in "Ecks vs. Sever" vs. the passage of time, the latter seems to have won pretty decisively.
silberbaer
1829 days ago
Final four: Larry Flynt, Predator, Marvel, and Batman?
reconbot
1829 days ago
Superman would realistically beat batman. I ended up with Predator vs Volcano vs Marvel vs Superman
lahosken
1828 days ago
You might also like: https://twitter.com/xkcdbracket

wine fraud

2 Comments
this_part_of_the_date_is_so_stressful_that_you_should_prolly_drink_beforehand
Read the whole story
Fidtz
2354 days ago
reply
All better than Merlot for a Wedding! Valpolicella or Beaujolais could be inexpensive red options too.
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
Covarr
2354 days ago
reply
I don't care what the experts say. The experts would have me serve Merlot at my wedding reception, and that is simply not happening.
East Helena, MT
Fidtz
2354 days ago
Good lord, what experts say that? That is the worst choice for a random group of people.
Covarr
2354 days ago
Well, that's what the people at the winery I visited suggested. I'm probably gonna go with a Riesling for white (my personal favorite), and maybe a Malbec or Pinot Noir for red. Even if I did think Merlot was a good choice in general, it doesn't fit our menu.

Temperature Preferences

5 Comments and 11 Shares
There's a supposed Mark Twain quote, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." It isn't really by Mark Twain, but I don't know who said it—I just know they've never been to McMurdo Station.
Read the whole story
Fidtz
2562 days ago
reply
First xkcd for a while I don't think works. I have been to Riyadh and Hong Kong in the summer. I find it hard to believe anyone who loves one of their climates would even like the other. Dubai+Delhi seems dubious too though I have no first hand experience there.
mooglemoogle
2562 days ago
Yeah that’s the thing, heat and humidity don’t necessarily go together. I could definitely see liking hot, dry summers but hating hot, humid ones. I would understand the other way less but that’s just me :)
kazriko
2561 days ago
I'm tolerant of hot, dry, but I don't like it. Hot and humid, or even warm and humid just makes me miserable.
Share this story
Delete
4 public comments
zippy72
2550 days ago
reply
Lisbon doesn't get a look in? I'm hurt...
FourSquare, qv
claudinec
2562 days ago
reply
So true. Wellington, Edinburgh and San Francisco are at the top of my revisit/migrate list for the weather as well as the culture.
Melbourne, Australia
ameel
2562 days ago
reply
Awesome. And I love that both Lahore and Karachi are in there!
Melbourne, Australia
angelchrys
2562 days ago
reply
I was wondering if KC would make it and sure enough, it is where it belongs: if you love cold and love heat. I live here and love neither.
Overland Park, KS
infogulch
2562 days ago
Yup. I also hate both, but I hate heat more. Looks like I need to move in the direction of New York (on the chart, obviously).

This Is Real

1 Comment and 4 Shares
I felt like I needed to stipulate right in the headline that this is not "fake news," because, well, it may be difficult to believe that this is where we are.

Following Betsy DeVos' confirmation as Secretary of Education, Republican Representative from Kentucky Thomas Massie introduced legislation to abolish the federal Department of Education.

Really.

The legislation, H.R. 899, is one sentence long: "The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018."

Really.

It already has at least seven co-sponsors: Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID).

Really.

In a press release, which you can read in its entirety at Massie's House website, Massie says: "Neither Congress nor the President, through his appointees, has the constitutional authority to dictate how and what our children must learn."

Really.

And: "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children's intellectual and moral development."

Really.

And: "It is time that we get the feds out of the classroom, and terminate the Department of Education."

Really.

You might imagine that Massie's legislation is some sort of critical commentary on the selection of DeVos, but that would be wrong. Because DeVos almost certainly shares his opinion about the department she was just confirmed to run.

After all, as I have been observing since the day Trump selected her, DeVos' only qualification is her willingness to destroy the Department of Education.

She was chosen specifically to be the perfect partner for Trump, who has said he wants to break up the "government-run education monopoly," and for Pence, who has been destroying public education in Indiana for quite some time, and for Bannon, whose exploitation of ignorance is significantly aided by subverting public education.

The GOP has spent decades shouting at poor and/or marginalized people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and now they want to take away their best opportunity to access a pair of boots.
Read the whole story
Fidtz
2842 days ago
reply
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
superiphi
2838 days ago
reply
There's a serious difficulty trying to make a country work without national standards. Especially education, which relies on the assumption that people can move from one state to another....
Idle, Bradford, United Kingdom
kazriko
2838 days ago
National standards can be agreed upon between the states without having a free-standing bureaucracy to trump the local initiatives. The Common Core initiative actually began as a state-run cooperative (And was actually popular... Until the DoE tried to force it.) We had minimal federal oversight of education as part of one of the other bureaucracies for decades before the Department of Education was formed in the late 70's.

Team Chat

7 Comments and 27 Shares
2078: He announces that he's finally making the jump from screen+irssi to tmux+weechat.
Read the whole story
Fidtz
2875 days ago
reply
2051, solid 1960's style future prediction there!
Share this story
Delete
5 public comments
stsquad
2871 days ago
reply
Truth
Cambridge, UK
hooges
2875 days ago
reply
IRC, never die!
Topeka, KS
emdeesee
2875 days ago
reply
OK, fine. When the galactic singularity becomes an option, I'll consider switching from IRC.
Sherman, TX
beowuff
2875 days ago
Don't worry. It'll still run irc as it's back end, so you can still connect.
Covarr
2875 days ago
reply
What if I'm only still on IRC because the rest of my groups are?
East Helena, MT
alt_text_bot
2875 days ago
reply
2078: He announces that he's finally making the jump from screen+irssi to tmux+weechat.
Next Page of Stories