Antlers of Iron

dont you just love capitalism..  

Black Mirror predicted this we are all goona die

my god but I get mad when someone flippantly dismisses important scientific progress because you can make it sound dumb by framing it the right way.

For a start, of course a lot of science sounds dumb.  Science is all in the slogging through the minutiae, the failures, the tedious process of filling in the blank spaces on the map because it ain’t ’t glamorous, but if someone doesn’t do it, no one gets to know for sure what’s there.

Someone’s gotta spend their career measuring fly genitalia under a microscope. Frankly, I’m grateful to the person who is tackling that tedium, because if they didn’t, I might have to, and I don’t wanna.

But let’s talk about why we should care about this particular science and spend money on it. (And I’ll even answer without even glancing at the article.)

Off the top of my head?

Also worth keeping in mind? People love, love, love framing science in condescending and silly sounding terms as an excuse to cut funding to vital programs. *Especially* if it’s also associated with something (gasp) ‘inappropriate’, like sex or ladyparts. This is why research for a lot of women’s issues, lgbtq+ issues, minorities’ issues, and vulnerable groups in general’s issues tends to lag so far behind the times. This is why some groups are pushing so hard to cut funding for climate change research these days.

Anything that’s acquired governmental funding has been through an intensely competitive, months-to-years long screening by EXPERTS IN THE FIELD who have a very good idea what research is likely to be most beneficial to that field and fill a needed gap.

Trust me.  The paperwork haunts my nightmares.

So, we had a joke in my lab: “Nice work, college boy.” It was the phrase for any project that you could spend years and years working on and end up with results that could be summed up on a single, pretty slide with an apparently obvious graph. The phrase was taken from something a grower said at a talk my advisor gave as a graduate student: “So you proved that plants grow better when they’re watered? Nice work, college boy.”

But like, the thing is? There’s always more details than that. And a lot of times it’s important that somebody questions our assumptions. 

A labmate of mine doing very similar research demonstrated that our assumptions about the effect of water stress on plant fitness have been wrong for years because *nobody had thought to separate out the different WAYS a plant can be water stressed.* (Continuously, in bursts, etc.). And it turns out these ways have *drastically different effects* with drastically different measures required for response to them to keep from losing lots of money and resources in agriculture.

Nice work, college boy. :p

Point the second: surprise! Anna Haldewang is an industrial design student.  She developed this in her product design class.  And, as far as I can tell, she has had no particular funding at all for this project, much less billions of dollars. 

‘grats, Anna, you FUCKING ROCK.

ps: On a lighter note, summarizing research to make it sound stupid is both easy AND fun. Check out @lolmythesis – I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. :33

FUCK YEAH ANNA HALDEWANG!

Please watch with sound omg

I hate you for this.

I lost it at the computer error.

@takashi0

Is your fridge running?

Glen Brogan  -  http://albinoraven7.blogspot.com.es  -  https://twitter.com/glenbroganart?lang=es  -  https://www.instagram.com/glenbrogan/?hl=es  -  https://es-es.facebook.com/artbyglenbrogan

Sentient beings (Part 2 / 2) - by Tomi Väisänen

“Personal project of mine where I wanted to explore the designs of this twisted and dark cyberpunk world.  Overall goal would be the gameplay of bloodborne combined with this gritty and weird scifi-universe.

Also trying out new workflows once again where I combine best bits from moi3d  and zbrush and assemble all in 3dsmax. All shaders all procedural, done with corona.”

Howdy!

I’ve never seen a shit-eating grin performed by anything without a mouth before

NEW BOSTONDYNAMICS VIDEO

c'mon, 2017 is bad enough without new robots that’re totally gonna end up murdering us all

there is absolutely nothing threatening about this so shut up you amish piece of shit and go churn some butter by the hearth

holy shit SLAIN

@doomybot can you past the Turing test?

cuck

“GIBSON EB ZERO 1961 MODEL!!!!” 

Japanese Sumo robots

this is the funniest gif i’ve seen all week what the fuck is going on

the best part is this isn’t even HALF the relentless bullshit insanity that goes on in robot sumo wrestling, a sport where the contestants are all hyperfast robots with scoop attachments and preprogrammed moves. 

(this one wants to be a beyblade when it grows up)

the idea is to include as many unique moves as you can, to make your shrieking deathbot difficult to counter

or dodging. that works too.

also, some of the speed demons have… unorthodox attachments to fool other bot’s sensors

WIIINGS MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRR

robot sumo is also a sport where spectators may end up taking a small robot to the shins if they aren’t careful.

FLYYYYYYY

I hope you enjoyed our foray into madness!

IT GOT BETTER!!!

Japanese Sumo robots

this is the funniest gif i’ve seen all week what the fuck is going on

https://youtu.be/QCqxOzKNFks here’s the full video if you wanna see more

Throwable Exploration Robot by Joris Wegner

I’ve been super busy with the upcoming book The Electric State, so I have neglected my Tumblr. I’m sorry for that! Anyway, here’s an update on what I’ve been up to.  More at: www.simonstalenhag.se