NORMALIZE the thing that looks like an old man living in your basement
DESTIGMATIZE the act of closing your vent to stop his dry whispering– which you cannot tell whether it is random or directed at you– from reaching you
ROMANTICIZE the idea of counting the number of stairs he climbs each night and praying he never makes it to the top
GUYS THIS IS SO IMPORTANT
we HAVE to let people know its okay to experience:
being repulsed by the putrid smell of his bile
feeling sick when seeing your grandparents because of the thing in your basement
locking your bedroom door even though you know it wouldnt be enough to stop him
letting your faucets run for a few seconds every morning because ever since he arrived more and more of your tap water had come out black as ink
knowing exactly what he looks like even though the only time you ever saw him was your first encounter with him at your uncle’s funeral when you were 6
questioning why youre the only one who remembers your dog
why cant anyone else remember your dog
what happened to your dog
oh my god i can still hear him whimpering downstairs some nights
i dont know if its actually him or just that thing taunting me
‘The Writer,’ 1 of 3 surviving automata
from the 18th century, is a programmable
boy that uses quill and ink to write any 40
letters of custom text. This 240-year-old
automaton uses all 6,000 of its parts to
create just enough pressure for fluid,
elegant writing, and is thought by
some to be the first computer. Source
This is truly a masterpiece of engineering from an early age. So amazing!
okay LOOK. I understand that on a purely mechanical and engineering level that this is an incredible piece but if scifi and fantasy media has taught me anything it’s that this motherfucker is haunted af and probably writes out gruesome deaths that mysteriously end up coming to pass thanks but NO THANKS BYE
computer science major here, i’m with haunted guy
Writer is actually one of a set language of three! The other ones play the organ:
And draw (it produces four different drawings):
Thank you for these images. Which just might give me nightmares.
Everytime you fill in CAPTCHA you’re helping to digitalize old books and documents. Using CAPTCHA abt 250 books are added to a digital database everyday
Its called RECAPTCHA! The creator of CAPTCHA (Luis von Ahn) realised a lot of time was being wasted with CAPTCHA (worldwide we spend about 500,000 hours doing CAPTCHA every day)
So he wanted to put it to good use
The reason why CAPTCHA uses wonky letters is because computers can’t read them, but we can!
But when trying to automatically digitalise old books and documents this becomes a hindrance because computers often cant read the faded old letters. So the digitalising is done by humans (very costly and time consuming)
Anyway Ahn found out about these a integraded into captcha creating RECAPTCHA.
Everyday about 150 (sorry i meant 150 not 250) old books get digitalized this way. They are currently using it to digitalize the whole archive of The New York Times (since 1851)
So we’re all kinda building a digital library of alexandria this way by using captcha, noice
reCAPTCHA Founded 2007. Overview reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service
that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that
cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for
humans to decipher.
In case any of you thought this was BS
I always love seeing reCAPTCHA being used.
That’s what my dad told me too.
So when we fill out those wonky letters, we are basically helping the computer read weird handwriting.
I went home from work early because I was hashtag vomiting profusely, but I forgot I didn’t drive myself there, so now I have to walk back, and I made it about a mile, but now I’m lying in the grass in the cemetery like it’s 1985 or some shit, waiting to not feel nauseous so I can go home and sleep. It’s very cool and sexy of me and I hope I don’t throw up on a grave and get haunted.
Hauntedlattesbackup 