Game of Thrones S03: My Understanding so Far

(Source: wantstobelieve)

jtotheizzoe:

The Earliest Days of NASA

Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of.

More here.

smithsonianmag:

Photo of the Day: The skyline of Porto, Portugal at sunset

Photo by: Luca Cortese (Milan, Italy); Porto, Portugal

girl-non-grata:

Husband animates joke about tortilla chips told by his drunk wife.

Pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

tardisity:

The oldest person alive was born on April 19, 1897, meaning that April 18th, 1897 was approximately the last time the Earth was inhabited by an entirely different set of people and if you don’t think that’s the realist shit ever then you can get right on outta town.

Wait no Connor Temple: the guy who gets head-slimed by a giant worm.

Nick Cutter: the guy who can punch a six-foot tall raptor in the face and live.

The world’s most complete repository of Animated Pizza Gifs

Things you find when you search for animated pizza gifs: an entire website of animated pizza gifs.

edwardspoonhands:

First, I love Tumblr and want to keep loving it. And yes, it is immediately terrifying to hear that Yahoo (which, from a lot of our perspectives, is a laughably backwards and culturally irrelevant company) is going to own Tumblr. I sympathize. 

But there are a number of circumstances in which this will not be a disaster. Let’s think:

WHY TO NOT BE TERRIFIED

1. David Karp is being kept on as CEO for at least 4 years. Karp’s policies made Tumblr what it is.
2. Tumblr is only as good as we (its creators) are. The idea that the cultural identity and creations we’ve fostered here have become worth a billion dollars is both inspiring and worrisome. But nevertheless, since we hold the value, we hold the power. 
3. Tumblr is being kept as a separate company. This is what Google did with YouTube and significant changes were very slow to come to YouTube (though they eventually came, and are still coming). My guess is there will be no significant changes to Tumblr for at least 12 months.
4. They’re buying it to become more culturally relevant. They know that controlling the platform will reduce or even remove that relevance, so they would be idiots to do it.

WHEN TO ABANDON SHIP

1. If Tumblr requires an account somehow linked to Yahoo.
2. If David Karp steps down, no matter what the reasons are.
3. If you have to pay to reach all of your followers (FACEBOOK!)
4. If Yahoo begins censoring legal images and videos.
5. If your dashboard becomes three columns by default.
6. If more than 10% of the dashboard is taken up by advertising.

ADVICE TO YAHOO! PEOPLE

1. Don’t do any of the above things or we will leave and you will own a billion dollar hole in the internet.
2. Drop the exclamation point for chrissake…it’s gaudy and grammatically confusing.

Yes, I do wish that Tumblr (being a more interesting kind of company) could have found a more interesting kind of exit for its founders and investors than the old standby of selling to a floundering company trying to revitalize itself. But I think Yahoo and Marissa Mayer are intelligent enough to not totally fuck it up. Here’s hoping.

 - Hank