No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

sushinfood

computervsworld

as we all know, the best vines are the ones with dogs. here’s a bunch of doggy vines!!!!!!

ffractaa

This made me v happy

funny

petermorwood

realmonstrosities

eartharchives:
“ The coconut crab is an incredible crustacean. It’s a terrestrial hermit crab and the biggest land-living arthropod in the world, reaching possibly the biggest sizes an animal with exoskeleton can reach outside of water in modern...

warpdoor

pixel-art-gallery

retronator

ISOcalypse by Pixel Joint

Another traditional isometric collaboration is complete as 42 members of the pixel art community Pixel Joint (you can read about the history and the present of the site in Retronator Magazine) turned in all 92 pieces of the puzzle.

These artworks are created by setting a theme and some ground rules (palette, scale), and then subdividing the big canvas into diamond-shaped tiles. Each artist only sees the edges of the neighboring tiles and adds their own continuity into the image. As the title suggests, it was all about the apocalypse this time.

Full artwork with all the authors listed can be found on the PixelJoint forum here.

Source: pixeljoint.com

pixelaesthetictrash

cosmictuesdays

Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.

ramoorebooks

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.
Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters

cidermoon

Now this…THIS inspires me.

studyingmeblr

Don’t give up people.

Source: ramoorebooks.com

petermorwood

siliconrepublic.com

Och AI: Will machines ever really decipher Scottish or Irish accents?

The ability of AI agents like Siri, Cortana or Alexa to understand accents such as those of Cork, Kerry or Scotland will be interesting.

John Kennedy

dduane

Heh.

petermorwood

Double Heh.

The locals call us “the Yanks” because after 30 years Diane has never lost her “American” accent, even though it’s had the rough edges smoothed down and she now has consonants she didn’t know about when she settled here. What used to be a specific Manhattan sound is now more New York State (ish).

I also get that “Yank” label because after 30+ years, her New York (ish) accent has spackled (Polyfilla’d) most of the regional irregularities off my own, which wasn’t very regional to start with.

My original accent’s British-English Received Pronunciation, with a bit of Northern Irish hiding in the background - people who know tell me they can hear the occasional NI vowel, especially au for ou. The most extreme version turns “I’m going out now, then I’ll use the power shower” into “Eye’m gauin’ aut nau, then Eye’ll yewse the parr sharr.” Turned up to eleven, it’s an accent that can strip paint.

With the New York (ish) overlay, I sound - according to Canadians from Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver and Montreal - like someone who’s lived in Toronto for a long time, while to Torontonians I sound like I’m from anywhere else except Toronto, maybe London. Ontario, probably, but UK perhaps.

To folks around here however it’s generic North American, hence Yank, which may be revenge for all the Yank tourists who think the Irish accent should sound like drunken leprechauns re-enacting “The Quiet Man” and are disappointed when it’s different to expectations. Not just accents: D and I have both heard that WiFi in Ireland is Cultural Imperialism, that there shouldn’t be taxis but jaunting cars, and why isn’t Dublin Airport thatched? (I wish I was making those up…)

I just call it a “Titanic accent” that left Belfast heading for New York and sank half-way, while Dragon Naturally Speaking calls it “please say that again’…

cosmictuesdays

snakeassassins

one thing that’s always bothered me about most people’s depiction of Holmes’s usage of cocaine is that most people in Victorian England were only just beginning to realize how badly it affected people???

like tbh I feel like a better modern equivalent would just be Holmes dumping a five hour energy into his fifth cup of coffee while Watson, a trained medical professional, stares at him in horror

todaysdocument

…as these are not ordinary times, I venture to ask what you have in mind as to whether professional baseball should continue to operate…

Letter from Kenesaw Landis to President Franklin D. Roosevelt Regarding Baseball, 1/15/1942

File Unit: PPF 227: Baseball, 1933 - 1945. Series: President’s Personal Files, 1933 - 1945. Collection: Papers as President, President’s Personal File, 1933 - 1945

Five weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, Commissioner of Baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking whether major league baseball should be played. President Roosevelt responded affirmatively with personal hope in what is now known as the “green light” letter.

“I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.”