The More You Know ★
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- Krassy19
- fuuuuuuckpedromendez
- all these years... battling with trying to hang shitpedromendez
- Obviously reversed!nbq
- Nice!!OBBTKN
- https://www.youtube.…utopian
- so much art... so little forkscaterpus
- Why isn't this taught in schools?webazoot
- +milfhunter
- omg! It took me 15 min to try to hang something last month! NOW I KNOW!!Bennn
- witchcraft!misterhow
- https://i.imgur.com/…Continuity
- My life was heading this way before this. Now my lifes' going this way. #lifechangingBennn
- What the....fyoucher1
- even the cat is watching the fork in 'whut'Bennn
- disclosure is real...lots of advanced technology posted online lately...liberation is coming.uan
- Wait!
No "what the fork?!" comment?
QBN, I am disappoint.Krassy - USEFUL THREAD https://www.qbn.com/…api
- Krassy16
- Fun Post Krassy!utopian
- Ui vs UX
https://i.imgur.com/…utopian - awesomedkoblesky
- ^^
I wish the sink just had one faucet mounted at an angle so it flowed into whichever sink was belowakiersky - https://www.youtube.…imbecile
- @imbecile tnxKrassy
- Do they lower the anchor with dental floss?CyBrainX
- Opperation Hennesee's sea lab?GuyFawkes
- "Sinks for a Cause"sted
- philips sonicareAQUTE
- Godzilla’s toothbrush.maquito
- +1renderedred
- "they needed a more quiet and stable place than a research ship to study how sound waves behave under water. Ships were unsuitable as they bob up and down"Chimp
- This is really wild.Continuity
- Gardener9
- by cutting the cheeseutopian
- good to know!renderedred
- https://image.shutte…Ramanisky2
- Women are so easily fascinated.cherub
- It will not workBabaVanga
- https://media4.giphy…scarabin
- Frenchmen secret trick finally revealed !gonzalle
- Wensleydale?PeterPancake
- I'm sure they would actually be fascinated.jagara
- "Here" *leaves*jagara
- Sure, if they’re hungry, trying to “maintain their figure”, A bit of protein and and a boost to old blood sugar would help anyone’s mood.jtb26
- I need this bookmisterhow
- May. Also, may not.NonEntity
- simple things, it's always the simple things.sted
- Captures my heart every time.mapleT
- bill cosby disagrees i guessneverscared
- everything not being pointed at is disturbingimbecile
- I want to know the sweating trick.garbage
- What is 'rue'?Akagiyama
- Krassy14
- +1utopian
- the Bobbinsted
- I never knew this, and I did wonder.monospaced
- Yeah always bugged me now I know! Thanks QBN!_niko
- Most useful thing I've seen in ages...see_thru
- always wondered how this worked.dbloc
- So the bobbin assembly has to be floating in order for the loop pass around it. Now I'm going to half to take the sewing machine apart.Turboslacker
- very interesting! krassy, you nailed it this time! :)api
- Turboslacker no, nope its fixed tricky little fucker :) i watched my mother replacing this hundreds of times when was a kid until I got how it works :)sted
- chukkaphob10
- lolGuyFawkes
- LOLKrassy
- https://i.imgur.com/…Squiddy
- ^ fuuuuuuck!chukkaphob
- 3 is wrong! Shark fin is on top of your head.
I used to do this to students on their first open water dives when I worked in OZ.mugwart - that gif, jeeeesus...I would have shat myself in my wet suit!mrAtor
- 1 & 2 should be swappedchukkaphob
- Hey mug, I'm an Advanced Open Water PADI holder... we should go diving and hold hands underwater like real friends docanoe
- ^^ defo. Only if we hold hands and skip into the water together!mugwart
- Where have you been my entire life? QBN is so underrated when it comes to people who can't wait to skip, skip, skip!canoe
- skip skip into the sea!
You a sun rise or sun set kind-a-guy? !mugwart - The '2X' detail for the 'fucking' hand signal is a nice touch.shapesalad
- scarabin17
- Krassy5
- reversed.nbq
- It’s a vis of protein movement in a white blood cellGnash
- That green thing its carrying is a weed moleculeGuyFawkes
- lolKrassy
- https://www.youtube.…utopian
- That's transport *within* a cell, along a microtubule. Not even a brain cell: any cell, in any animal, plant or fungi. Nothing to do with endorphins.NonEntity
- And it can strut like a muthaNonEntity
- Haters gonna hateNBQ00
- Amazing....think about it....dkoblesky
- when u vape...neverscared
- Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin alivejagara
- scarabin6
- Look at the size of that hectocotylus! Her siphon stands no chance.ideaist
- aliensrenderedred
- Wait, so every time we eat octopus there’s a 1 in 8 chance that we’re actually eating penis?_niko
- Next Level Skull Fuckutopian
- @niko ok so I actually know this one without googling it. The sexy arm is called the spermatophore, and it's literally "just the tip".garbage
- All the sea-jizz is right on the end, and it is cut off and discarded before going to market. But also this entire process seen here? Takes about 4 hours.garbage
- They have a dedicated fucking arm, and a dedicated submission arm. It's yeesh, but they are still delicious ocean aliens.garbage
- I have a dedicate fucking arm too.monospaced
- What a head fuckChimp
- OctopussyNonEntity
- well hungKrassy
- chukkaphob8
- Crowd goes nuts...utopian
- awesomeomg
- I still cant do this.sureshot
- should be on the front pagesureshot
- *orders some 10ft yellow polesFax_Benson
- Got that pango?monospaced
- omg monobklyndroobeki
- that's a huge space though. definitely not nyc.bklyndroobeki
- Lol mono!HijoDMaite
- lol mono!moldero
- sted10
The Space Shuttle and the Horse's Rear End
Say friend, did you know that the US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
I see, but why did the English build them like that?
Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Well, why did they use that gauge in England?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing?
Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts?
The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
And the motto of the story is Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war-horses.
So, just what does this have to do with the exploration of space?
Well, there's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's ass.
- https://encrypted-tb…_niko
- They could have moved the factory.calculator
- Thanks, that was fun!Green_Pork
- fun read but a myth. https://magazine.eng…Beeswax
- @Beeswax “Mind your own!” Lol... Sorry, couldn’t resist.Green_Pork
- kingsteven10
- For the children.face_melter
- nice!moldero
- Wit to until their golden child starts listening to some of the lyrics.utopian
- gi gi gi giver her the knife!moldero
- We will remember the Wu-Tang Clan when the sun envelopes the earth in 4 billion years. That's how important they are.jagara
- renderedred10
- Amerikkka is Fucked Threadutopian
- i lol’ed way too harddasohr
- He's Captain Texas which is way betterTurboslacker
- so he works for the IRS?son_dey
- Fax_Benson8
- i still have all mine, loved getting themGnash
- Golden age of the internet. Give us your postal address and we'll mail you lovingly crafted, beautifully printed type specimens, for free.Fax_Benson
- Fontsmith's were lovely, too.Fax_Benson
- Have some from FontShop cca 2008 I believegrafician
- and this Fontbook https://typographica…grafician
- I have that issue, it’s a beautiful book. I used to have some mags but I think I lost them... bummer, since the only remaining ones cost $75maquito
- I had a big crush with Rudy Vanderlans’ work back in the day. I still have some font specimens somewhere. Amazing layouts. Used to steal his grids.maquito
- Remember Poppi? https://www.bruil.in…maquito
- It’s remarkable that those icons are almost 20 years old and yet look so contemporary.maquito
- Cool! There is a great interview on p22 of this edition https://www.emigre.c…Daithi
- ...between Vanderlans and Peter Bilak of Typotheque / Fontstand. Always remembered it as a good one, and just got to revisit. Thanks!Daithi
- Krassy5
- cool, apart from the unnecessary genitals.Fax_Benson
- i'm sure people feel the same way about you.imbecile
- This is great!SunSunSun_
- Safe space violated by genitals. How dare you!Hayoth
- really Fax? why you lookin at dog dick? I didn't even notice it would be there is it was video lolshellie
- dogs are castrated for a reason - my
fragile sensibilitiesFax_Benson - lol, I didn't notice until I saw your comment.dbloc
- Where da bitches atbezoar
- lol the nuts especially are really unnecessarysarahfailin
- SimonFFM1
Did you know houses in Sweden have a built-in vacuum cleaning system? They don't use vacuum clears like in other countries. You have a socket in each room and only attach the tube to it.
- Pretty standard here, tooGnash
- That's nothing, I have programmed a swarm of drones to 'fan' up dust particles and collect them in an old sock.shapesalad
- These are pretty common in the US and Canada as well.zarkonite
- we had a house that sucks when I was a teenager in Australia toosausages
- ive only seen one house in the US that has this. A custom made house of a friends parents in the 80's.fooler
- My house has one, I rerouted one line to a kickplate under a kitchen cabinet, sweep and go https://bit.ly/3qgK9…whatthefunk
- Amazing, guys. For me this was all new.SimonFFM
- Doesn't suction go down the longer a tube is?Nairn
- ^ ya, but most of that loss is through friction. The internal tubes are smooth bore, vs the corrugated hoses on the biz endGnash
- Dyson hates them.ideaist
- houses in the 50's were built with these systems in the US.sarahfailin
- Ever home that I ever been it that has one of these...they all blow ass and barely work, regardless of how many sockets they have around the house.utopian
- scarabin8
- it's a stretch, more likely they are talking about the 1972 Champions league final where Cruyff's mighty Ajax defeated Panathinaikos of Greece :)_niko
- doubtful. ajax was invented in 1947imbecile
- Ajax was invented in 1999i_was
- you might want to check your misinformation. Ajax is one of Colgate-Palmolive's main products, launched in 1947.imbecile
- https://en.wikipedia…)i_was
- I ... uh ... oh fuck me, I didn't know why this was called Ajax.
Well, don't I feel like a right plonker, now.Continuity - And now that I know, that's actually a killer slogan. Too bad one needs minimum a BA in Classical Studies to get it without help.Continuity
- Nairn1
- Hi, I'm Nairn - early 40s, I never realised this. Slightly worried that my brain never questioned the clear distinction.
All these years.Nairn - I never realised this either...38.
Went there years back, still never questioned it.BaskerviIle - DUDE! There's also an entire extra "wing" on the west side of the building. It's got an office that's oval, mind blowing stuff ;)zarkonite
- If there's two fronts, where do they put the bins?Fax_Benson
- @Fax_Benson – The inside is full of trash right nowBaskerviIle
- Of all the people on here - and especially considering you actually visited the place (!) - I'm super glad it was you who admitted as much, Baskerville. xNairn
- @zark - a friend who i asked about this said as much about the Oval Office. For me, the bottom one here IS the WH.
But then, so is the top one :\Nairn - Fake news...45 years oldoey_oey
- Yes I knew that. That's why I found it funny when comparing the front and back facades as if they were the same.monospaced
- @nairn: I was just being facetious but I agree, the rounded balcony one is what I picture in my head.zarkonite
- Wait, which one blew up in Independence Day?Akagiyama
- Clearly, the bottom one, Akagiyama..
..that said, I had to check, 'cos I dont trust nuttin' no moahNairn - @mono - i genuinely didn't.
As a presumably thoughftful and aware American, I'd hope you'd noticed! :)Nairn - i have been to DC, so yes.sarahfailin
- how many bunkers?Krassy
- The second one is what we normally see?drgs
- Top photo is the front/main facadeKrassy
- I noticed but it was only a few years ago. I’ve never been therescarabin
- Hi, I'm Nairn - early 40s, I never realised this. Slightly worried that my brain never questioned the clear distinction.
- Krassy4
- parabolic?sarahfailin
- I knew about the top and middle from the science centre but would have thought the bottom would have been fastest. The more you know™_niko
- The middle one would be basically optimal FTL through "subspace"grafician
- _niko the bottom one is median speed between middle+topgrafician
- Fake News™Nairn
- So the more horizontal the slope along its curve, the less impact gravity has on the ball and thus its velocity (an interesting variable on the 3rd slope)SteveJobs
- Which is the longest path?misterhow
- bottom one is the longest, top one is the shortestKrassy
- Flatten the curve!nbq
- Trebuchet the sick!Nairn
- detritus7
This post by HijoDMaite : http://www.qbn.com/reply/3895819… reminded me of how surprised I was at the journey Hawaii has taken. I knew it was the result of some massive lava bubble that's moving Eastwards/South across the Pacific, but until recently I had no idea how far it had come. I tried the other week following its path backwards, but got a bit lost around Kamchatka somewhere.
I was trying to work out if it might've been the cause of the Siberian Traps lava plain (exciting little man that I am, this is how I fill my free-time...).
Anyway, it's interesting to see the path its taken over the eons..
- i find the little curl right of the ? arrow interesting, as if the plume met plates millions of years ago and melted it in before the plates moved on.detritus
- what makes you think it starts at the top?uan
- Kamchatka will forever in my mind be associated with
https://c1.staticfli…detritus - wow! the more you know in deed.renderedred
- @uan - not sure what you mean? The recent lava flows are all eastwards of Hawaii and it's 'known' that the lava plume is heading that way.detritus
- I've just followed the line of sub sea mounts back. i 'knew' the went about as far as the middle arrow, but was surprised to see it go so far North.detritus
- makes sense. I was just looking at the tectonic plates map and it's weird hawaii isn't at the edge of one but right in the middle of the pacific plate.uan
- Yeah, it's 'anomolous' in the context of plate tectonics. My belief is this is the same mechanic that created the Deccan and Siberian Traps...detritus
- ..but because of the weight and cooling of Pacific water, it's not been able to break out and cause millions of years of lava outpouring.detritus
- *shrug* but wtf do i know?detritus
- The islands were created by a "hot spot" in the earth's mantle. Essentially it's an area where magma flows upwards, so the tectonic plate is actually movingzarkonite
- towards the northwest, giving the illusion that the islands are moving south east.zarkonite
- @detritus & zarkonite, you guys are on the right track. better explanation -> https://www.youtube.…dorf