Knight Falchion Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 (edited) I love studying the social behaviors and movement patterns of whales, my favorites being killer whales. Killer whales are particularly interesting in that they can fall into one of two categories of social and hunting behavior, these being transient- which itself has a coastal and deep water subdivision- and resident. Resident orcas are the ones most people are familiar with- the ones that travel in large pods, take care of their young as a group effort(like other marine mammals), prefer to eat fish, and employ coordinated hunting strategies across the whole pod. Transient orcas, on the other hand, travel in much smaller groups and are fucking savage, going after other marine mammals like porpoises, dolphins, and other whales, sometimes even sperm whales. Transient orcas will beach themselves in order to catch sea lions that escape to the shore and then shuffle backwards into the sea once the job is done. The great white shark's only natural predator is the killer whale. Orcas also have the second largest brains of all ocean mammals, surpassed only by sperm whales. It's my somewhat unrealistic dream to use my marine biology degree to study killer whales and other marine mammals, but if I do get to, I will be so goddamn happy. If not, whale watching will definitely be my hobby. Edited December 3, 2015 by Ambling Falchion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansem Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 itt rn shit no one will read because too long Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 itt rn shit no one will read because too long i've read it all go away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 we don't need that attitude here :'( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 (edited) I like loopholes. Loopholes aren't necessarily something I'm passionate about, but I like them. It isn't quite being spiteful, but...it's kind of similar? After all, I don't like them because I have a need or desire to get around a limitation. I do so because I find it amusing to mitigate their effectiveness. There, five sentences. That's a paragraph. I mean, technically a paragraph can be one sentence, but whatever. This body of text, for example, counts as a paragraph. Though, with this sentence that makes five in this paragraph as well. Edited December 3, 2015 by AnonymousSpeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serpent of Sheol Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 wow I read all of them people are interested in cool stuff here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 especially specta, i hear in the subtext Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sylveonzoroark Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 what's my grade Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 (edited) 90/100 good topic choice, endearing and personal delivery. work on appropriate word choice [if essay was meant to be formal] and organization/flow of thought I have graded as an informal writing piece Edited December 3, 2015 by Specta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serpent of Sheol Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 do I get a 10/100 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 you had a lower grade for not accounting for your audience when writing your paragraph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serpent of Sheol Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 rip I just wanted to talk about astronomy ;( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 you can never forget your audience, my friend if you do, then how do you expect to get them interested? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kao Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 YOU REMEMBER THIS, RIGHT SPECTA? A while back, I wrote an essay on why I hated tofu. And then Specta convinced me to add copious amounts of purple prose. http://pastebin.com/f7A31hMw/ [spoiler=Text form, if you don't want to click the link.] Coagulated soy milk compressed into an oblong prism suffused with the vital amino acids required to live an extravagant and bounteous life is a popular composition of nutrients commonly enjoyed by those rendered incapable of masticating animal flesh, as well as those that can, whether of their own preferential or own constraint. I myself, am unable to tolerate the horrid chunk of soy myself, as I simply despise the mere thought of being forced to ingest the nutriment against the will of my own. The reason behind this bizarre detestment of this innocent, flavorless, mealtime culinary creation is because of how the foreign substance feels when attempting to ingurgitate it, and the taste of the object itself. "But wait," you may interject, "tofu doesn't taste like anything! How can you say it tastes bad?" And to that I would answer with the fact that I commonly eat cooked pasta without any supplementary condiments or foods and instead eat it in its pure, unadorned state. In doing this, I find great flavor and contentment in swallowing it; that of which I lack when eating tofu. Though the appreciation of this soy bean product has begun to arise in common people of today, I hardly stop to consider the likelihood of my dislike to diminish. Alas, though the wretched substance is not to my liking, I fear the worst, as it has begun to become a somewhat tolerable "meal", much to my dismay; at least, when prepared a certain way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specta Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 yes it was so absolutely, purely awkward that i loved it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makaze Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 So about 3-4 weeks ago I found out that css implemented the "width: calc(percentage-pixel)" method for div sizing. This is fucking awesome. As a professional front-end developer with a long history with web design and styling, this solves a lot of problems historical css had in regards to dynamic sizing. Say you want a side bar of a fixed width, I like 150px-200px usually depending on design, but the rest of the page to conform to the page or container width, you can't do it with pure css without doing something extremely hacky, and I was not fond of the margin or padding or whatever = -99999px hack. Felt it too inelegant. My solutions to css trouble have historically been fixing it with javascript, but that's actually really bad practice for things that aren't tied to additional logic and event listeners anyway. But it's either that or doing things in a really gross and hacky manner which I hate. Now, I can finally rest in peace. I literally sent my friends a text message in regards about it because I was so fucking excited. I've been using CSS for 8 fucking years and it's finally here. I can finally have peace. Praise be. Holy shit. I've been waiting my whole life. Next you'll tell me they also have CSS means to center things vertically in fixed and absolute positions accounting for undeclared dimensions. e.g. Centering something vertically even when its height changes dynamically with window resizing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melodi Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 I think that I am most passionate about learning new things, especially in a biological context. Okay, yes that sounds super duper topical, but let me explain further. Today I learned that the reason why wetting your hair and then drying it again fixes your hilariously anime-esque bedhead because the hydrogen bonds between the keratin proteins of your hair are broken through hydrolysis. This is so goddamn cool, okay? I love finding out new things. One time, I spent an hour and a half researching ampullae of lorenzini in sharks just because I was so interested in the more specific uses that sharks have for these tiny pores in their cute sharky faces that they use to detect electrical currents, such as those in their prey, or even the Earth's electromagnetic field. Every day that I learn something new I remember how much I love this world because of how absolutely mag-fucking-nificent of a place i am in to be observing and learning of new discoveries about it. On a college tour two weekends ago, the father of the only boy in our tour group and he told me that he recently was told of a geneticist who essentially synthesized DNA in the lab and injected it into bacterial cells that were nearly dead or something, but the cells began to reproduce and I swear to god I nearly cried because this man had told me something so amazing and so wonderful. I love learning new things and I love listening to people who want to share things with me because it is just so incredible. ouo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinumi Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 [spoiler=my thing isn't as interesting as everyone else's woops]nor is it one paragraph background stuff first i study journalism and communications at my high school. there five publication staffs you can join, but i chose the one i did because the adviser had decided to start over with a clean slate this year. it had originally been a school newspaper, but it had had so much disadvantages against the online news site we also published that my adviser chose to turn it into a city-wide magazine. this is also my first year on the staff, and i was really nervous because all the staffers seemed super close to each other. some of them had also won national awards for their designs or writing (one of my editors-in-chief actually won feature story of the year and the brasler prize this year it makes me happy to know that the staff is in good hands) so it made me SUPER NERVOUS what if i couldn't keep up or was a burden ;_; BUT over the summer there was a retreat at which all the journalism majors attended to get to know everyone else on staff better. it probably sounds really lame but i actually made a lot of friends while i was there and it was just a great experience in general i appreciated it a lot our staff is now about to print our FIRST ISSUE (the ad team managed to collect 3000 dollars worth of ads so no one else had to do ad runs phew) and it was so fun watching the stories and designs and interviews and photos that we had all pitched forward. as a writer, i had learned a lot not from just doing my own story, but also while copy editing and fact-checking others'. it's super neat to see how far we've gone, especially because we've all worked together and built this issue from the ground up. we had run into a lot of roadblocks at the beginning (my first story actually had to be chopped because i was writing a profile and my interview subject got robbed but hey things happen) but everyone's gotten so far and idk i just love everyone i'm so happy and proud to be part of the staff ;_; Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euklyd Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 So about 3-4 weeks ago I found out that css implemented the "width: calc(percentage-pixel)" method for div sizing. This is fucking awesome. As a professional front-end developer with a long history with web design and styling, this solves a lot of problems historical css had in regards to dynamic sizing. Say you want a side bar of a fixed width, I like 150px-200px usually depending on design, but the rest of the page to conform to the page or container width, you can't do it with pure css without doing something extremely hacky, and I was not fond of the margin or padding or whatever = -99999px hack. Felt it too inelegant. My solutions to css trouble have historically been fixing it with javascript, but that's actually really bad practice for things that aren't tied to additional logic and event listeners anyway. But it's either that or doing things in a really gross and hacky manner which I hate. Now, I can finally rest in peace. I literally sent my friends a text message in regards about it because I was so fucking excited. I've been using CSS for 8 fucking years and it's finally here. I can finally have peace. Praise be.oh my god I barely html and this is still wonderful I I've yet to figure out what to write about and I don't want to write about something I'm not actually passionate about if I think of something I'll come back and write about it probably Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makaze Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 (edited) This statement is false. If I asked you a question, would your answer to that question be the same as your to this one? Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself? Paradoxes are an obsession of mine. The more I learn, the more I find that life is full of paradoxes. They have consumed me. Desire has a death wish. I am a being of will, but a will free to go in all directions does nothing. If I reached perfection I would not know it. My love is self-serving. My certainty and my doubt are two sides of the same coin. Any sufficiently powerful being would have the universe as its body and therefore be indistinguishable from the universe. Absolute dark and absolute light are equal. Truth may exist, but cannot be known to exist. Logic is incomplete, yet nothing can transcend it. Everything is defined by contradiction. It's transfixing. Edited December 3, 2015 by Makaze Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euklyd Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 This statement is false. If I asked you a question, would your answer to that question be the same as your to this one? Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself? Paradoxes are an obsession of mine. The more I learn, the more I find that life is full of paradoxes. They have consumed me. Desire has a death wish. I am a being of will, but a will free to go in all directions does nothing. If I reached perfection I would not know it. My love is self-serving. My certainty and my doubt are two sides of the same coin. Any sufficiently powerful being would have the universe as its body and therefore be indistinguishable from the universe. Absolute dark and absolute light are equal. Truth may exist, but cannot be known to exist. Logic is incomplete, yet nothing can transcend it. Everything is defined by contradiction. It's transfixing.is that a paragraph or a poem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makaze Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 is that a paragraph or a poem? word It's hard to talk about the absurd without getting absurd yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 A new set for Cardfight! Vanguard is coming out in a couple of weeks. It features several different variants of Aqua Force, but the one I'm interested in is the Ripple series. Back when they were first released, they looked like another somewhat-generic ride chain (that is, count to three using specific units), and most people ignored them. With the new set, they get more feisty units (lore-wise), the stern second-in-command, and some guy in the future whose only heard of the big boss through legends. Now, they're getting the attention I feel they deserve, even if one of the more successful decks is a rushdown deck that attempts to cheese the opponent quickly. I will play a more standard version of this deck, because Genovious amuses me, and he's the head of the Ripples. It also helps that Miltiadis, the second-in-command, looks like he could quit his job in the navy and start a boy band. I have no idea what I'll get in the new set, but I'm aiming for a full Ripple deck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 (edited) rip I just wanted to talk about astronomy ;( i know right, but the cool stuff gets hard to describe... also, how could you forget the supernovae associated with white dwarfs and neutron stars! Absolute dark and absolute light are equal. i don't get this one uhhhh it's a tough choice between space-related things and music. i guess i can talk about the various components of space! well, first of all, it's mostly empty! it's got a number density of 1 hydrogen nucleus per cubic centimeter. matter as we know it makes up for only about 5% of the universe, with only 0.5% making up actual objects in space (stars, planets, etc.). the other 4.5% is gas spread throughout the universe! about 25% is dark matter, which was integral in allowing for the very formation of galaxies (without dm, galactic clouds weren't massive enough to collapse fast enough to form galaxies in only 13.7 bn years [it'd take much longer]). around 70% is dark energy, which is somewhat of a mysterious energy that beats gravity at very large scales causing the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. on smaller scales, stars are insanely interesting. there's three separate populations/epochs/whatever of stars, starting with pop III. pop III stars are theoretical currently, but are proposed to be the very earliest stars formed in the universe and have very low metallicity (composed of very few elements heavier than helium), next are stars like our own sun, which have moderate metallicities. pop I stars are young stars that burn bright and burn hot (like sirius). there's several classifications of stars, o, b, a, f, g, k, and m, ranging from high luminosity to low luminosity. there's a cool thing called a hertzsprung-russell diagram that tells us lots of information about the evolution of stars. there's also planets! planets are really cool and really dim, unfortunately. rocky planets form close to their parent stars, because volatile elements like hydrogen aren't stable when too close with the sun (think like jupiter and saturn). those 'hot jupiters' that we typically find via occulation techniques (ie, orbital transits/eclipsing) were probably formed far away from their stars and migrated inwards for some reason. we don't know! more research is needed. planets like neptune and uranus are icy bodies--everything freezes when it's too far from heat, intuitively speaking. those, along with small rocky planets, are immensely difficult to find. telescopes need to be nearly 10000x more photo-sensitive to detect them, as opposed to what's needed for hot jupiters. studying the composition of planetary atmospheres (my current research! ) tells us a lot about what's out there, but also gives insights about planetary evolution, and how unique or common our solar system is. a final fun fact: the movie interstellar was factually correct when matthew m. didn't die when falling into gargantuan! falling into supermassive black holes is theoretically much safer because you'd accelerate faster than the tidal forces could stretch you to death (spaghettification). stellar evolution is also an extremely interesting topic, but was already covered. also, even though this wasn't a question, reading the responses from people makes this a really rewarding 'question.' Edited December 3, 2015 by Phoenix Wright Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrhesia Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 The Russian constructivists were a prominent subset of the 1920s avant-garde pan-European movement, standing out due to an emphasis on stark contrast and angular forms. This manifested itself in many forms, such as art and propaganda (Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge by El Lissitzky being the most famous example) - it was unashamedly pro-Communist and worked directly to further Communist goals. Stalin, upon coming to power, felt that the Constructivists were nothing more than a pack of dangerous fanatics, and Constructivism disappears from the USSR in the 30s onwards. However, its sustaining legacy comes in its beautiful and striking architecture, much of which stands today. Many of the buildings they were tasked to create were 'Workers' Clubs', a new kind of leisure and education building for the working class that would be built near factories and the like. Probably the most famous, Rusakov, had three ampitheatres that literally just jutted out of the structure. In my view, it's kind of a terrible eyesore. A far better example is the Zuev Workers Club which contrasted the traditional angles and hard brick with a large glass cylinder (which contains a staircase). Like the Rusakov, it stands today in modern Moscow, though for reasons unknown many of the windows have been bricked up and the balconies that allowed people to look over the streets taken down - it loses a lot in the transition as a work of beautiful architecture, and the old, contemporary black-and-white photographs capture it far better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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