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kitties off topic open thread

Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff: Kitten in a beanbag edition

I think I need one of these.
I think I need one of these.

After that last post, I realized we were probably overdue for one of these. As always with these open threads, no trolls, no MRAs (or people who bear a striking resemblance to MRAs).

 

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Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

Oh, wait, Goetic is correct. That’s 17th century stuff which Crowley used. Hermetic was the actually stuff that lead to chemistry.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
10 years ago

Hermes Trismagistus was considered the founder of the “sciences” of alchemy, theurgy and astrology. The whole left-handed magical tradition isn’t part of that, supposedly, although I cannot for the life of me tell the difference between theurgy and Goetic stuff. It might be a Dean Esmay thing in that the nomenclature you use is very important to the person doing it but doesn’t matter at all to bystanders. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know – I want to know all things – but it’s perhaps a lower priority thing.

I can’t wait for the episodes that talk about those mysterious creatures: Ladies. There was alchemy dedicated to figuring out women.

I imagine most of these alchemist didn’t get out much.

Oh god. I didn’t think there was anything in the world that I’m more excited about than Fallout 4, but… this. I want to know all about this. It sounds hysterically funny in all the best ways. I imagine it as being like lurking in Less Wrong and watching them discuss dating advice, only in Latin and whilst wearing doublets, and with astrology instead of evopsych.

Please please please link me to it.

katz
katz
10 years ago

The thing about real-world alchemy is that it doesn’t work, and never did, and people knew it at the time. There was no effect no matter what you did, and so you could mostly do whatever you liked. This means that people ended up doing really obscure things just to be different from one another, and came up with intentionally obscure terms and symbols for the sake of being obscure.

In fairness to the alchemists, those more on the chemistry side and less on the occult side did have perfectly functional language of symbols; there’s a symbol for each real element and then symbols for common procedures like distillation and condensation, which creates a nice compact, functional algebra-like system of notation. Yes, there were variant symbols, but I’d chock that up largely to the state of communications. Hell, we still have two types of calculus notation.

The Pseudomonarchia is fabulous if you’re into demons. If anyone remembers the time I started a blog called Anti-Anti-Manboobz and accidentally summoned Astaroth, that was from the Pseudomonarchia.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@EJ

When I get to the episode, I will, but the link to all current 50-60 episodes is right up there, 😛

Now, “sciences”? Really? You could at least credit alchemy for helping start out the Periodic Table. They were big into all sorts of metals for things and liked writing down and organizing shit. They’re also the ones that made alembics and stuff like that, and according to the podcast were really the first ones to distill things. Some of the stuff they did was wrong but the whole “I’m going to do this and see what happens and record what I did!” was pretty important.

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/b00p.gif

Alchemy was a precursor to chemistry and yooooou know it.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
10 years ago

I stand corrected and will concede the point. Alchemy was in many ways the precursor to chemistry. Astrology… less so. While they did do some observations and laid the empirical groundwork, astrology had already parted ways from astronomy before Brahe came upon the scene. Nearly everything about astrophysics has involved un-learning the bad habits we got from the astrologers.

#AstrophysicistProblems

Grumble grumble Pluto a planet grumble grumble…

Ahem.

Can we at least agree that theurgy was unequivocally not the forerunner to any modern science?

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@EJ

Early alchemy is kinda separate from astrology, other than being connected to Hermetic work. It’s like saying calculus and alchemy are related because of Newton.

Pluto’s a dwarf planet, yeah, but it’s still like the biggest chunk of ice that people can see from Earth, so, pfft.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

Wait, what did I say? I meant theurgy isn’t related to alchemy, other than being connected to Hermetic work.

katz
katz
10 years ago

In fairness, alchemy was also a mystical quest (and still is), so there was plenty of woo depending on the source, and a lot of “fact” that was easily disprovable but fit the narrative, ie, sulfur and mercury make good. But they also discovered phosphorus and how to dissolve gold and other useful things.

As for Pluto, that’s just semantics, which is never terribly scientific anyway.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

Ah, I just learned on this podcast that Michael Sendivogious, an alchemist, said that heat is made from motion, that water turns to steam because of motion. He also said air isn’t a single substance and have life-giving substance.

Kinetic energy and oxygen.

http://historyofalchemy.com/podcast/episode-5-michael-sendivogious/ first three minutes.

http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kid-deal.gif

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
10 years ago

Jackie, you have the finest collection of gifs known to humanity. That is all.

I will definitely get this podcast when I get home.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@EJ

😀

And, hey, it might not be a “scientific” thing but it’s still cool historically. There’s nothing neater than learning about kooky science stuff.

It also turns out that Michael Sendivogious also made the philosopher’s stone and went on the lamb because of it. Which is hilarious.

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
10 years ago

*hears about another police brutality case, although thankfully nobody was killed this time*

*feels kinda judgmental for automatically assuming it involved a white cop assaulting a black person*

*reads article*

…

GOD-FUCKING-DAMNIT AMERICA.

(Bonus: Against children. And the blatantly racist cops were called because two other blatant racists physically attacked another innocent black girl. Need to play Splatoon for a few hours to work off the rage…)

ej
ej
10 years ago

Has anyone else seen this yet? Another sexist Nobel laureate. Color me surprised.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33077107

Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.

And his “apology:”

I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. It is true that people – I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field. I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. I’m really, really sorry I caused any offence, that’s awful. I certainly didn’t mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually.

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
10 years ago

My favorite story about alchemy is the guy who actually succeeded in turning a substance into gold. Only trouble was, the substance was platinum; much rarer than gold, and turns into gold via radioactive decay.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@SFHC

For a second there, I thought you were talking about the pool incident–

*sees article*

Fucking damnit. Fucking everything, man. Fucking racist ass white women, fucking racist ass tumbling cops, fucking everything.

@Kirby

…Platinum turns to gold through radioactive decay? Platinum isn’t even radioactive. 😐 Fucking people who can’t science.

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
10 years ago

@Panda

It gets worse, if you can believe it. The also-racist white guy who called the cops and told them to target the black kids… Is a convicted animal torturer [TW for descriptions of nauseating animal cruelty].

BUT BLACK THUGS AMIRITE??? (Raaage.)

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@SFHC

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/fmc.gif

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

There was a alchemist called Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Bombastus.

Bombastus.

Bombastus.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

They kinda made the same joke in the podcast. 😐

It’s a good joke.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

http://sassy-gay-justice.tumblr.com/post/121268045685/geekandmisandry-ask-an-mra-anything

Dude Stick.

Dude Stick.

Chapstick…for dudes.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

An interesting podcast about one of the first ever woman alchemists.

http://aca.st/9465cb

katz
katz
10 years ago

Am I the only one who would love to hear these hypermasculine dudes say “I’m putting some dude stick on my lips?”

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

@katz

That means the asshole shelled out $5 for a tube of lip balm because they couldn’t stand “feeeeeeeeemale” products because of the cooties. I don’t want to be near the guy that would buy it, let alone be in the same room to hear them say it. (Maybe in a video or movie or whatever, but still.)

brooked
brooked
10 years ago

Apparently dudes with semi-automatic handguns and tactical knives are insecure about their manhood and/or prefer the complete absence of color.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
10 years ago

Chapstick Classic:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5181UNVnt0L._SY355_.jpg

BTW, that’s about $3 dollars there. For three.

$5 for a tube, $3 for three tubes, one is made only for men, one is made for anyone because it’s fucking lip balm.

CHOICES.

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