this is the saddest fucking thing. wheres that post about when you cant even write a poem about it because its just there already
if you germinate cucumber seeds in the dark vs. in the light the ones grown in the light will look normal and the ones grown in the dark actually won’t be stunted in the way you might predict, these seedlings grow into pale yellow plants with smaller leaves because they expend every ounce of energy they have into growing as tall as they can possibly endure, in the dark they grow much faster and taller than they do in the light, because they don’t know they’re an experimental treatment kept in the dark, they think they’re buried alive in the soil or under some foliage and they’re growing upwards trying to break through into the light. its the most obvious thing in the world and also the most devastating
[Image ID for original post: Screenshot of a web search and answer. The search query is “why does rhubarb grow in the dark” and the answer provided by the search engine is “"It grows because it’s looking for the light,“” where “because it’s looking for the light” has been highlighted as selected text. /end ID]
of the 5 teslas in the parade, one turned off so early we didnt even see it, one had to turn off after someone cracked its windshield, and one had to turn off after it got a window shattered. further down from us people were fully throwing garbage and beer bottles with the intention of breaking glass. only 2 of them made it to the end of the parade, having been jeered end to end.
if this was supposed to be a temperature test- because people are speculating this was a test ride for the military and tesla having a partnership, no one knows why on earth these things were in mardi gras to begin with- then they certainly got an idea of how people feel.
Wrong: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because she was Lord Byron’s daughter.
Right: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because that was the closest you could get in 1850 to being a Super Mario 64 speedrunner.
This is how I found out that Ada Lovelace was Lord Byrons daughter
Well, yeah. That’s why she received the unusual education which laid the foundation for her later discoveries in the first place. Her mother, Lady Byron, firmly believed three things:
It was her responsibility as a mother to ensure that Ada didn’t turn out like her father;
Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet; and
The opposite of poetry is math.
Ada Lovelace’s biography handily illustrates how well this theory worked out in practice.
“I think Christopher’s translations are generally adequate. But he made one mistake which is worth describing because it was deliberate and because it illustrates a fundamental difference in outlook between the translator and his author. “Polly Peachum’s Song” tells how Polly behaved to her suitors before she met the right one, Macheath. In each verse, a boat is mentioned. Polly and one of the suitors get into it. In the first two verses, the boat is cast loose from the shore, and Polly adds, “But that was as far as things could go.” In the third and last verse, however, the boat is “tied to the shore,” when she has got into it with Macheath.
Christopher found this incomprehensible, because he took it for granted that the proper poetic metaphor for sexual surrender would be the casting loose of the boat. So, quite arbitrarily, disregarding the meaning of the German text, he transposed the lines and had the boat tied up in the first two verses, only to be cast loose in the last verse when Polly is possessed by Macheath.
No one protested. The book appeared with Christopher’s version of the poem. It was only when Christopher met Brecht for the first time, in California about six years later, that he had his misunderstanding corrected. Brecht told him mildly, with the unemphatic bluntness which was so characteristic of him: ‘A boat has to be tied up before you can fuck in it’”
— Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind
I doubt I will ever read a funnier anecdote than this one.
amhrancas 