The Skellingcorner

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
softselfsignificance

Positive parts of 2016

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey

- the rise of old friends senior dog sanctuary
- Hamilton
- pokemon go
- female ghostbusters
- i don’t give a fuck im outta here Obama
- captain america civil war
- girl, black guy and latino guy leads in new star wars
- deadpool
- lemonade
- literally???! Nothing??? Else????

feathersmoons


WELL ACTUALLY SINCE YOU ASKED:

- Starbucks actually did the hard work of figuring out how to donate perishable food in a foodsafe way.

- 500 elephants were relocated to a better, safer and bigger home.

- “Unadoptable” cats (who are usually killed) may have a really important place in the world in their traditional area of work, given we’re thinking maybe poisoning stuff all over the place is a bad plan.

- We made massive strides in Alzheimers’ prevention.

- We found out that the ozone layer is repairing itself and that all the work we did to get rid of those aerosol chemicals was actually worth it.

- This therapy could cure radiation sickness.

- The Anglican church resolved to solemnize same-sex unions the same as opposite-sex unions, which required a super-majority of all three orders of the church (lay, clergy, bishop) and got MORE than that from both lay and bishop.

- The Rabbinical Assembly issued a resolution affirming the rights of transgender and non-conforming individuals.

- The Liberal gov’t changed the Canada Child Benefit so that it’s actually helping people who NEED THE FUCKING HELP. (I am sorry if you are a six figure income you do not actually fucking need this make some fucking lifestyle adjustments for fuck’s sake.)

- Highway of Tears is finally getting some regular fucking bus service.

- Eastwood donated a bunch more land to the Carmel River restoration project.

- We have developed gene-therapy for autoimmune disorders.

- Precision treatments for cancer are hitting clinical trials and WORKING.

- Dentists are once again providing free care to veterans who need it.

- The Anglican bishop on the Islands made an Eastern pilgrimage walking from Alert Bay to Victoria to stop at every First Nations community and personally, unequivocally apologize for his church’s involvement in fucking them up.

- Canada is actively attempting to increase and improve refugee resettlement.

- It has been determined that the manatee population has bounced back so much (500%) that it can be moved from “endangered” to “threatened”.

- This guy got to see his kids again.

- The Orlando Shakespeare Festival showed up with angel wings to block funeral-goer’s view of hate group so they wouldn’t be disrupted.

- Net Neutrality has been upheld by the appeals court. (No that fight isn’t over BUT THIS IS STILL A FUCK OF A GOOD THING.)

- We may have cured MS. (LET ME REPEAT: WE MAY HAVE CURED MS.)

- New short-treatment-period cure for HepC is huge success.

- Rise Women’s Legal Centre opened.

… . and this is just what I came up with in a pretty lazy google search in an hour, including distractions where I went down the research rabbit-hole for a bit because holy crap some of that stuff’s NEAT, guys!

And I know I’m missing stuff, because I wanted a citation for every single thing I put on there.

Yes, there have been some really bad things that have happened in 2016. There have also been a number of huge fucking miracles, and SIMILAR bad things have always happened, just about every damn year - maybe not to you, or maybe they didn’t make the news, and maybe you just don’t remember any of the good because of that whole massive Negative Bias problem that human brains have, but?

A lot of good shit happened. A lot.

And like I do actually get the sudden overwhelmed feeling of EVERYTHING SUCKS? but that mindset is, at this point, literally our worst enemy. “Everything is terrible somebody do something” helplessness is what will in fact consign us to everything BEING terrible. 

Everything is not terrible. In fact there are new ways, every single month, wherein new opportunities and miracles are happening and no that does not balance out the bad shit but it gives every reason to FIGHT the bad shit, and to get past the bad shit, and to make sure the bad shit ISN’T the overwhelming stain. 

So. 

reivolutionary-penguin

I want EVERY single one of my followers to read this. PLEASE I know a lot of bad things happened this year and it’s ok to be upset but all of this pessimism is only making things worse

Source: elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey
2016
nishakadam
grilledcheese-samwich

words of advice from a senior in college:

- good grades are important, but so is experience. your 4.0 is exceptional, but your resume is an entire page and that incredible gpa takes up very little space. so take full advantage of internships, clubs, research opportunities, volunteer work, anything you can that pertains to your major. you’ll thank yourself when you start applying for jobs.

- if you are passionate about a club or organization that has nothing to do with your future career path, that is perfectly okay! stick with it every year, hold leadership positions, do the best you can in it. the passion, leadership, and loyalty speaks volumes.

- get to know the professors in your major classes and let them get to know you too. go talk to them, even if you don’t have any questions about the class. one day you’re going to need references and letters of recommendations and their words carry weight.

- learn how to study. it’s different for everyone. if studying with other people is unproductive for you, then don’t feel bad about not going to the study group that your classmates organized. studying hard is good, but studying smart is better.

- sometimes you have to stay in and study for your huge exam while your friends go out to dinner. but sometimes you just have to say screw it and go with them anyway. you’re in college to learn, but the spontaneous late night runs to taco bell is something you’ll cherish for a lifetime.

- if your college has some sort of career center, take advantage of it. they can help you with your resume, your interview skills, your cover letter, everything. they can point you in the direction of internships and companies that are hiring. career centers are incredible resources that your tuition paid for, so you might as well use it.

- always keep an umbrella, a water bottle, and some snacks in your backpack. you’ll thank yourself.

- in every class, make at least one friend and get their number. it’s helpful to have someone in your classes that can send you notes if you overslept or can clarify assignments. these people are absolutely crucial – they will save your butt more times than once.

- if you come really close to making that grade that you really needed on a certain exam, don’t give up on it. follow through. don’t email your professor – go talk to them about it. see where you went wrong, understand the mistakes that you made and explain to them why the question tricked you. tell them that the question you missed will keep you from making a certain grade in the class. don’t beg them for mercy, don’t ask them to boost your grade. groveling isn’t as appealing as a student who is genuinely interested to see where they went wrong. teachers appreciate students who care enough to follow up. and they just might end up changing your grade because of it. it’s happened to me before. and if they don’t end up changing it, then you did all that you could. the world will go on. i promise.

- before an interview, go into a bathroom stall and assume a superhero pose. legs apart, hands on your hips, head held high. hold it for a couple minutes. this boosts your testosterone and lowers your cortisol, which increases your confidence and decreases anxiety. after the pose, do a little dance with your limbs out long. i don’t know if this does anything for you physiologically, but it helps with the jitters. take a few deep breaths and tell yourself you got this one in the bag. it may sound silly but it really works, i swear by it.

- make the most of these 4 years. i know you’ve heard people say it goes by fast, but you don’t realize how fast it’s gone until you’re two months away from your graduation and your mind is completely blown. so milk it for all it’s worth and don’t waste any time – start the first day of your freshman year. put yourself out there, try something new, make mistakes, meet as many people as you can, go to the football games and the basketball games and the equestrian meets, stay up all night and climb the buildings on campus and watch the sunrise, go to the library during finals week even though it’s crowded - there’s this odd comfort and unity that comes from being among all the other stressed out students, study hard, play hard, don’t wish away your week and look forward to the weekend – use every single day as an opportunity to do something you’ll remember, something you’ll thank yourself for, something new.

- the moral of the story is that you have four years to do everything you possibly can so that when graduation is right around the corner, you can look back and have zero regrets – or maybe a couple drunken ones, but no need to dwell on those. you did it and you did it well. that’s the feeling you want.

education life
fandonetrash
maherissey

shoutout to all the kids who

- grew up smart and lost it when they got to high school and dont know what happened

- are so bright but just cant focus academically

- are told their effort isnt good enough when in reality they just dont understand

- are too shy to ask for help and go without it and therefore dont reach the potential they know they have

- are brilliant in class but underperform in exams

- have to pretend that they dont care about their grades because they constantly underperform and dont want to look stupid

Source: hirsts
education school
abschaumno1
phantomrose96

A friend of mine is taking an astronomy class, and she was telling me about some of the impressively large telescopes that exist throughout the world. These are the sorts of things that cost hundreds-of-millions, sometimes billions of dollars, and see into the deepest, farthest, most distant recesses of space, beyond anything even conceivable in human imagination.

And of course, for projects that take many years, hundreds of people, and billions of dollars, that broaden the entire realm of human understanding, the telescopes need names. And no one tops astronomers at naming.

Ask yourself, what should one call a very large telescope? Something cool? Something unique? Something meaningful. Well ask no more, as astronomers have solved that problem. Allow me to introduce you to the 

image

Brilliant. Beautiful. Send it to the presses Jim. But wait! What about a telescope that’s even larger! Worry not Jim, as we’ve got that covered:

image

Of course. Exceptional. Elegant. But wait! What if there’s one even larg–

image

TL:DR Someone……please help the astronomers. 

contrabassmellotron

I’m on mobile but https://xkcd.com/1294/

phantomrose96

the xkcd link:

image

xkcd understands

holybikinisbatman

ok so story time because i absolutely cannot keep my mouth shut about this!

i work for a lab at my school which happens to be an astrophysics lab, and we work with gamma rays on the order of over 100 TeV. we call this VHEGRP or Very High Energy Gamma Ray Physics. The group I work for? VERITAS, or the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System.

but that’s not the funny part

recently (and I say summer of 2015 recently) more telescopes have been in the works to expand VEHGR research, and more specifically CTA (The Cherenkov Telescope Array) is working towards making telescope arrays all around the globe so that we may see the entirety of the gamma ray sky. It’s all very exciting, and loads of us were pooled together to solder parts for the Schwarzschild-Couder telescope

the hilarious part

was coming up with names for all this

I kid you not. Imagine if you will several older professors who are Very Important and take Business Skype Meetings and you can never see them because they are Always Busy. now imagine if you will those same professors coming up to a bunch of college kids and asking us to name their groups, while keeping a few specific words in that acronym/initialism/etc.

Yes. I’m not even joking. Half of these names are made up by overly-caffeinated 4am college kids sitting around a table saying random names and eventually those names become the actual acronym for a Very Important Scientific Group. 

Now I had the pleasure (and several others of us) of being approached to create a name for a new group of people that would be in charge of debugging these new telescope systems. Yes, that’s right. An international scientist group, that will be responsible for code maintenance and technical support for telescopes with NASA and around the world was asking college kids for Names.

Our list was simple, and we had to include some of these words: debugging, quality, data, team, squad, control, effective(ness), assessing, etc

What did we come up with? several Suitably Scientific Names, like VENUS. VENAE, VIRGA, VITAL, VIVAS, VERITE

but then, there was The One

VADER, or Veritas Advanced Debugging & Examination for Resolutions

the group of five of us were crying. we had been on coding benders the entire week trying to make the deadlines for our research papers. some of us had crashed the servers while trying to do 47 runs (I had been pushing 25 on another, and had finished up what would have been over a week and a half of running time in less than 6 hours bc of using batch condor, but this other unlucky soul had gotten the yelling of a lifetime). and some of us had to resolder the over 700 parts that we had been putting together because the lasers weren’t being detected on the attached webcams. it was chaos, and from that desperation there was… this was perfection. 

and you know what? the got damed nerds that those scientists are, they’re going to call themselves VADER

Source: phantomrose96
Science