Rudy Giuliani
Patriarchy
Ohhhhh yes
Paper visas. You have my passport number, is it not enough to check if I have valid visa?
Leather burnishers have been pretty much unchanged for 50,000 years
I need more of these.
One I’ve heard recently was…the hair styles you see on ancient Roman art look remarkably modern. Art historians got to wondering just how they managed such complex hairstyles without modern hairspray, plastic clips or elastic bands? A hairstylist took one look and said “They’re sewn.” The historians go “NAAAAAH that can’t be it. Whoever heard of sewing hair?” The hairstylist goes “Hairstylists. Watch” and then she replicated the styles on the statues by sewing.
Here’s another one: Marine biologists long struggled to understand/describe the shapes of certain marine life, including corals. They had these weird wavy patterns that didn’t make sense to us rectangle building monkeys. Meanwhile, a mathematician studying hyperbolic geometry realized that crochet patterns that add loops with every row achieve wavy ruffles in a hyperbolic pattern. It took a few others to piece those two ideas together, to recognize the coral structures as having hyperbolic geometry as a means of maximizing surface area while minimizing volume. The Crochet Coral Reef project has been making crocheted models of sea life ever since.
As a woodworker, it amazes me how the mortise and tenon is still hanging on.
If you aren’t familiar, a mortise is a square or rectangular hole in a board, might go all the way through, might not. A tenon is a square peg basically cut on the end of a board to fit into a mortise. This produces a very strong joint.
The very oldest intact wooden structure known on earth - a well head in Germany - is held together with mortise and tenons. We don’t know the name of the man who built it, because written language hadn’t been invented yet.
There is a thing called a floating tenon. Imagine you want to join two boards, but don’t really want to cut a tenon onto either. Make a mortise in each, then make a third smaller board to fill both tenons. Floating tenon, loose tenon, there are many words for it. The Ancient Egyptians held boat hulls together this way, the hull planks were joined edge to edge with loose tenons which were then cross-pinned with dowels. One such boat was found disassembled in a pit next to the Great Pyramid at Giza; the seal on the chamber was so good they said it smelled of cedar when opened. The ship was assembled and is currently on display.
All the way on this end of history, the European tool brand Festool has a tool called a Domino. It has the form factor of a Lamello-type biscuit joiner, but the domino cuts with a wagging router bit to form a wide, short, deep mortise to insert store bought loose tenons into. This tool is so new, it is still protected under patent.
We’ve been making mortise and tenons for tens of thousands of years, and yet we’re still innovating on the concept.
That’s dope af
Cashiers not being able to sit down
For real?!? Which inhumane country are you talking about?
America lol
Vinyl records. Its a very… space inefficient way to store your music, but they are pretty to look at.
And the dust on the needle sounds pleasing
Also incredibly heavy
Hammers, irrigation systems, smithing… etc
Not sure if any of it counts as surprising after rereading the prompt
Also I’m in the UK, visited the next town over last week and walked past a pub and thought, that looks like a pretty old building… turns out the pub was built and has been running as a pub since the 1500s
Moneygrams
My place of work has a telex machine in the corner still… I presume if a message comes in on that it is because ww3 happened… it just sits there and makes me feel slightly anxious to consider it.
A 5-day, 40 hour work week “standard”
Somebody saying “bless you” to someone else who sneezes
The president
Bless you is such a weird way to respond to a sneeze though. Fitting for the clusterfuck the english language is tbh.
The english language has a lot of religious language hidden away in expressions
For example, goodbye is just a shortening of “god be with ye”
In Germany we say (literally) “Health” as in “Get better”
Love the joke from (probably not actually) nazi times
“Heil Hitler!” “Seh ich aus wie ein Arzt?” Or " Heil ihn selbst!"
In english: “Heil Hitler” “do i look like a doctor?” Or “heal him yourself”
Love it
I know. We do the same
From ancient Rome when they thought sneezing was an omen and may dislodge and expel the soul from the body (Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Homer).
We know know sneezing can wake the small elf living in your stomach. According to RFK.
Sure feels like that sometimes.
Still weird that english uses it. Most other languages I k ow just say something about your health.
“langaige”
Seinfeld suggested: “You’re soooo good looking!”
Fascism.
Hey, it’s neo now.
Nothing new under the sun.
less surprised, more disappointed.
Me.
I mean, I’m not particularly old — only 29. But I’m super surprised I still exist. And it’s not for lack of trying. It just turns out that even though I’m pretty mediocre at living, I’m even worse at dying. Fortunately, I’m in a place now where that’s a thing I’m happy about, for the most part.
I’ve got at least 8 different attempts under my belt, and the way that some of them failed makes me feel like it’s almost offensive to be an atheist. For instance, when I swam out into the sea, as far as I could until I couldn’t anymore, and the next thing I remember was waking up on the beach, not super far from where I’d swam from. I thought that was a thing that only happened in movies. Granted, I’m not a strong swimmer, so I didn’t get very far out, but still.
That was one of my attempts as an adult, but I had a lot as a teenager too. When I was about 16, I was resentful of all the people who cared about me, because the guilt I felt over hurting them was the only thing keeping me alive. Building off of the crisis management advice that I’d seen that said it’s good to try to put some distance between you and your suicidal feelings by trying to hold off until the next day, for instance, I resolved that I would stick around until I was 20, and if nothing had improved by then, I would kill myself and fuck anyone who begrudged me this escape — no-one could say I didn’t try.
Well, it turns out that some things did improve by age 20 — enough that it suggested there was a non-zero hope that I could some day live and actually be happy to be alive. I still struggled a lot after that point, because it’s not like my mental health was magically resolved (it still isn’t), but I’m glad I stuck around.
In a way though, things got harder after age 20. Ironically, there were countless times throughout my late teens in which looking forward to my death was the only thing that saved my life. When things were particularly rough, I would work out how many days I had to go before I could rest, and it soothed me. After I was 20, however, I was unanchored. I had a life that didn’t feel like it was my own, because I never expected to make it this far. Even now, it still sometimes feels like I’m in a bonus level. It’s a bizarre feeling.
But yeah, I, and many of the people who know and love me, are surprised that I’m still around. I’m proud of myself, even if a significant part of why I’m still here is sheer luck. Obviously this wasn’t what you meant when asking your question, but I’ve been reflecting on my progress a lot lately, and the idea of giving this answer amused me. It feels healing to joke about this stuff a bit, I think
Sometimes it’s good to fail, even eight times, and I’m glad you did. Thanks for sticking around. I hope you continue to do so.
Fax machines.
The amount of “modern” companies I had to fax shit too when my dad died was infuriating! Hyundai, Target, etc etc etc. Email is a thing dumb ass companies! Fuck me.
Many government departments and private companies consider faxed documents as a duplicated “original”, instead of a copy. Because that totally makes sense.
IT MEANS FASCIMILE GOD DAMNIT
Totally… 🤦
Why did target and Hyundai need to know your dad died?
He had accounts with them, that’s part of the probate process. Letting them know.
I can’t exactly recommend the service which can be a bit annoying but clicksend allows you to send faxes and actually letters for pretty cheap. the letter thing is pretty nice when something demands a physical one. you upload a pdf and it gets printed and mailed out. fax works same way. fax is way cheaper obviously.
winfax.exe is looking at you and sneering…
we did all this, in a cave, with a 14.4 baud modem on windows 3.0
Can’t exactly trusr anyone with such sensitive documents that I’d have to print out and mail.
youd be surprised. most required mail stuff is straight up bullshit type stuff and not really that senstitive. its usually just hoops they through up to slow down and stymie anything your entitled to.
Why would someone need that instead of just printing it and mailing it themselves?
just faster. you have to have a printer and paper for it and envelopes and stamps. with the service you just upload the pdf and put in the address and hit send. I mean I think most could see how it can be useful. Bit cheaper to print and fold and seal and stamp and drop in the box but with as unoften as I need to send a physical letter I like it.
Then you need a printer, printer ink, an envelope, and stamps. If you really don’t send mail out that frequently, I can see the appeal of it. Could easily be cheaper. I also imagine it might have some utility to ADHD folks.
It just occurred to me: I doubt my 26 year old son has ever sent anything in the mail himself. If he wants to send a message, it’s email or text, and if he wants to send a gift, he’ll order it on Amazon and have it delivered. I’ll have to ask him if he’s ever actually mailed anything.
Fax may outlast landline telephony.
It already has. Vast majority of companies still handling fax are using VoIP fax modems with digital receivers that turn it into a PDF. I haven’t seen a functioning copper landline probably since 2015…
Did you know that it would have been possible for Abraham Lincoln to send a fax to a samurai?
I think the reason I didn’t know it is because it isn’t true.
Unless you’re a Lincoln truther who thinks he wasn’t killed in 1865 way before fax machines were available in the USA and Japan.
there was a period of around 12 years where it would have been possible, given that they had both been in scotland at the time. between 1853 and 1865 it would have to have been an ex-samurai.
I see the potential for a historical fiction masterpiece here
Erotic Lincoln-Samurai Fax Fiction
The first fax machine was invented in 1843.
But of course they had to wait for the second one to be invented…
They still have some uses (Invidious: mirror selection or Nadeko).
Also maddening and frustratingly!
Faxes are common in healthcare facilities and hospitals. I would imagine that they’re safer when it comes to sensitive data.
comes to sensitive data.
not really. there’s no encryption to faxing, and the software to fax from pc’s directly (enabling faked records for example) has been ubiquitous since the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFax
THANK YOU.
You know another fun thing that can happen? A doctor moves practices and changes fax numbers, and the old number gets assigned to a new, completely unrelated non-medical group. But no one told the medical entity that sends faxes, and no one updated the relevant records. All of a sudden several months worth of PHI has been getting sent to a women’s clothing store.
Fax in the medical field needs to die. Between the possibility of this happening, higher probability of transmission failure, paper (where offices are still using physical faxes) getting misplaced before getting filed in charts, etc., it’s just a plain bad way to send medical information in 2026.
Edit: OH, and don’t get me started on fancy, marketing-designed lab reports that use colored indicators to communicate treatment-critical information that no one checked for legibility in black and white, yet still get sent by fax. Like, fucking WHAT??
on’t get me started on fancy, marketing-designed lab reports that use colored indicators to communicate treatment-critical information that no one checked for legibility in black and white, yet still get sent by fax. Like, fucking WHAT??
holy fuck
They are analog modems on a telephone line. There is no encryption at all, because they still need to be compatible with fax machines from the 1970s.
There was also an exploit where someone sent a manipulated image via fax, which would exploit an old bug in a jpg library that is used in the software stack, so you can run your own code.
Not really safer, they just work with the existing infrastructure. Personally, I think there’s still a place for fax, it’s essentially a convenient way to scan and transmit, and these days you can get them to your email or phone (not in healthcare because that’s not HIPAA compliant). Sure, not anybody’s first choice, but I think it’s still valid.
It’s only convenient if you have access to a fax machine, which the majority of us don’t
My comment was in context of existing business infrastructure. You’re right that most of us don’t have a fax machine, but many organizations still do and therefore it can be very convenient for B2B communication. And in the case of orgs that want faxes but you don’t have one, ifax is a thing as well.
I’m not making an argument for faxes, I’m just saying for an outdated technology it’s stayed quite useful in the modern era.
With a mail-enabled printer, you can send your scan directly to an email address.
I fail to see what you’d need a fax for.
Needed it just yesterday.
The baths on the Titanic still hold water today
There are more hydrogen atoms in a single water molecule than there are stars in the entire solar system!
That’s good I’ll admit it took awhile.
Did you mean water drop? Because I thought it was precisely two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up a single water molecule…
Take another minute to think about just how many stars are in the solar system…
Whoosh…
Incredible
There’s an even more fucked up joke in there somewhere about the shared bathwater still belonging to the same people
