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Dumb Stuff

G.O.N.K

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Stories

Government Transparency

The class I’m T/Aing goes off-topic a lot, so I started recording OTs after a couple weeks. The class isn’t through, but we’re doing focused wrap-up stuff now so OTs would probably continue to trend down, with maybe just one or two short OTs until the class ends on 5 May.

Notice spikes in short OTs a week before spring break (1 March) and a week before we started working on final projects (7 April). The sudden drop in long OTs after Spring Break is interesting, but I feel like if I worked it out that drop wouldn’t be very significant, mathematically.

This recording system didn’t prove ideal; it’s just what I came up with in 10 seconds on 27 January. More qualification would be a big benefit; >20s OTs occasionally mean “took up the entire rest of class,” which is very different than the common two-minute discussions of hamburgers. Generally, I think a more qualified OT-rating system would have resulted in a graph that reflected when breaks were much more clearly. Consider the OT totals for each day, and you already start to see that.

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Dumb Stuff

Quasi-Incorporated Pope Hat

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Dumb Stuff

Samlibar H. Wagers

I was playing games, and R. Monkeys OBE bet me that a chiptune version of Bohemian Rhapsody was uncreatable; such beeps are inadequate, tonally-speaking. The result of that wager!:

Such beeps are, indeed, partially-inadequate. The middle of the song is a little thin because I found that if I copied it exactly, the result was really atonal. Which might be a limitation of the sound libraries I am using, because shifting it didn’t help.

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Dumb Stuff

How Last.fm Must Work

In my opinion as a professional, there is an entire desert world populated with these—possibly the second planet in the Kolibri binary system. Each creature catches the falling records and secretes the resulting info-fluid into the last.fm datalink on its back.

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Dumb Stuff

Galaxy-Class Appreciation Society

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Dumb Stuff

Riposte

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Stories

Recordings of Robonians

The nom de probe “ProBot-1” doesn’t have anything to do with ProBot’s drill-arm, but instead refers to his professional status as a dilithium prospector, although of course he is now retired. But we can accept a lack of fortitude; he is a Regulan.
Although fellow passengers were confused as I drew his portrait on my phone. “I thought those had better graphics,” Ronaldiñho said. I chided him for inadvertently mocking my congenital tiny square fingertips.
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Dumb Stuff

Feto GP

Notions of H. Hiram Goosebee Esq.

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DIY Junk

Helps

I got new headphones, and then left them alone overnight, and they got better!

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Dumb Stuff

Altchartrain

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Stories

Codex Saumarez II

I will tell you one story of El Generalissimo Ernesto R. “Mad Dog” Saumarez, Uniter of the Americas and Guardian of the Red Shield.

In his youth, El Heneral Saumarez lived, for a time, in Sanyo Presents Rocas de Santo Domingo. This small village in the heart of the Southern Americas was well-regarded for its cuisine and the pleasant, husky voices of all its residents, particularly the infants. . . but it was also a cursed hamlet. For underneath the town, in the depths of the Lithium Mines, there was trouble—in their hunger for lithium, the Chileans dug too greedily, and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness underneath the Cordillera de Mahuidanchi, for it is common knowledge now. At the time, though, not even Saumarez knew. But once a week, in the darkest part of the Sea-Goose Week, a million giant bats would shoot out of elevator shafts across the tiny village, chew off the nipples of anyone they could find, take a quick break, and then die.

El Heneral Saumarez, Protector of the United Seas, was not a fan of the Underdark Bats and their nipple-hungry ways. He called upon his assistant, a young Wibbles Hugo, to help him outfit an Under-Ground Expedition, the aim of which would be to find the home of the bats and destroy it. Working late into the night, the team of man and Super-Man created an early prototype of the device which Wind-Tamer Saumarez would use to conquer The Salvadors twenty years later—the Mole-Tank! This contraption was a tank with the world’s largest drill bit on its backside; where tank barrel and machine guns and steel treads could not forge a path, the tank could merely drive in reverse, and burrow through matter organic or in-. A fantastic sort of device.

The pair clambered into the beastly vehicle, and El Heneral Saumarez set a course for the Lithium Mines. “Let us descend!” he said, and descend they did; several weeks of drilling passed slowly until suddenly, the Mole-Tank broke through into a giant cavern. As its sodium superlamps clicked on, Saumarez and Hugo could see more and more eggs—a million eggs, each filled with a fetal giant nipple-fevered bat! At the center, a slugulous mother bat lay, producing even more eggs as she sat. “Sir, so many of them! So, so many!” Hugo cried, “Not enough bullets! “I am Saumarez,” El Heneral Vanadioso replied. He opened the main gun’s loading hatch removed the armor-piercing rocket shell’s warhead, and put in its place a single hair, plucked from his own head. Re-chambering the round, he swung the main gun around and fired at the center of the mother bat. The shell lodged itself in her chitinous plating, and grew white-hot—and all of a sudden, a million Saumarez-hairs burst from the shell, each of them spearing one bat-egg! The last, original hair sprung out last, growing and wrapping itself around the neck of the mother bat.

Generalissimo Saumarez saw her writhe, and reversed the tank into her chest, the giant mole-blade spraying bat goo everywhere. “Sir, her death already comes. . . your hair is magical, let us not waste the mole-blade’s power,” Hugo said. “I am Saumarez,” replied Saumarez, as bat purée sloshed over the tank’s uncompromising body. The two returned to the surface, and the residents of Sanyo Presents Rocas de Santo Domingo immediately crowned Saumarez their king. “I was already your king,” said Saumarez, “but I will bless you all nevertheless, at a later date.”

Hail Saumarez! May his chronicles never end!