Peter Ellis

@almostconverge

your friendly local yorkshireman from transylvania

784 Folgt1.283 Follower24.774 Posts

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Peter Ellis@almostconverge· 23d

this map that is floating around on some corners of the social media space is as good a reminder as any, that maps aren't neutral conveyors of objective facts that exist in a vacuum: every map comes with an assortment of various assumptions that you're supposed to accept knowingly or unknowingly

A map of Europe with the caption "WHEN WAS YOUR COUNTRIES CAPITAL CITY FOUNDED?", with a date written over each country.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· 27d

President Bush is interrupted at 9:07 a.m. during a school visit in Sarasota, Florida., by Andrew Card, his chief of staff, and informed that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 19

but don't take my word for it, let's have a quick check on wikipedia

Wikipedia snippet from the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good

Economic theory describes two goods as being close substitutes if all three following conditions hold:

1. products have the same or similar performance characteristics
2. products have the same or similar occasion for use
3. products are sold in the same geographic area

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 19

wow, it hasn't created competition, i wonder why that could be surely it can't be because...IT IS PHYSICALLY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE

Snippet from BBC News talking to Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell.

----------------

Powell added that "the privatisation of water hasn't worked".

"It's not created competition.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 11

which is the perfect excuse for me to trot out one of my favourite wikipedia snippets

Personal life

Necrobutcher is an atheist. He has a daughter and a grandson.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 11

not for nothing do we say in software development that naming is not a science but an art

$Snippet from the React source code: /** * Different release channels declare additional types of ReactNode this particular release channel accepts. * App or library types should never augment this interface. */ interface DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED_EXPERIMENTAL_REACT_NODES {}$

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 9

www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

A slender bull figurine in silver that looks like it was made in the 20th century but is actually early bronze age.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 3

hydration break

Photo of two hopelessly drunk blokes in a run-down garden somewhere in Eastern Europe, it could be anywhere really.

One is sitting on a bench and is slumped forward onto a rickety table that also has some dangerous-looking plastic bottles on it, hinting at home-distilled spirits having been drunk.

The other is sitting on a broken chair that is missing its back, well, he probably was sitting on it at some point but now it's only his lower half that is sitting on it, the rest of him fell out of the chair backwards, bending his back in an impressive, almost yoga-like angle, with his head nestled on the ground near the trunk of a tree.

He's wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket, not that this matters all that much at this point.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jul 2

Photo of a printed A4 sign crudely stuck to the door, the sign reads:

THE SPIDER
INFESTATION
PROBLEM IS
MOSTLY
RESOLVED

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 26

Mocked up whatsapp screenshot showing a group called "World Leaders (not Keir)"

Underneath the group title there's the status line:

Emanuel reacted 😂 to: "i think i fell asleep while he w...

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 24

roses are red crimes can be heinous

Headline: "Doctors are warning people not to put frozen potatoes in their anus"

It is accompanied by a handy photo of some potatoes being emptied from a sack.

It's quite a lot of potatoes.

Certainly compared to the number of frozen ones you should put in your anus, which as it's been made abundantly clear, is zero.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 19

it's certainly a type

Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester (officially, at the time of writing)

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 15

it's never not time to remind ourselves when we learnt that the guardian has no scottish people in the newsroom

Screenshot of a Guardian headline:

Would you like a jobbymoon?

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 14

ok folks, what the hell is going here? i am heating a 1:1 (per mass) ratio water and sugar mixture (for elderflower cordial), it's still some way from boiling, i gave it a stir about 30 seconds ago, which made this white foam collect on the top which i expected but then this happened

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 13

and you'd think as a respectable modern engineering company they'd gently gloss over the founder's crackpot theories (other things they didn't need to because luckily hanns himself died in 1931, before the nazis came to power) but no in the incredibly detailed* chronicle they published they write:

An excerpt from the company chronicle:

Hanns Hörbiger

Johann Evangelist “Hanns” Hörbiger was born on November 29, 1860, in Atzgers dorf near Vienna. After completing an apprenticeship as a blacksmith and mechanic and studying at the School of Construction and Mechanical Engineering in Vienna, he began his professional career as a technical draftsman and designer.

In 1895, he laid the foundation for HOERBIGER as a company with his in
vention of the steel plate valve. In 1900, he and Friedrich Wilhelm Rogler founded the engineering firm “Hörbiger & Rogler” in Budapest, which later moved to Vienna.

Hörbiger gained international renown for his technical inventions, particularly in the field of valve technology. In 1906, he patented the second generation HOERBIGER plate valve, which is still considered the
standard today and formed the basis for the company’s later success.

From 1925 onwards, he increasingly withdrew from practical engineering work and devoted himself to his passion for astronomy.

From 1894 onwards, he developed the pseudo-scientific world ice theory, also known as glacial cosmogony. Hanns Hörbiger died on
October 11, 1931, in Mauer near Vienna.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 12

Zoomed in and cropped photo of a label on the side of a train. It says:

Cooler / Alternator Group
BEWARE - Rotating Shaft

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 10

i really should've put money on it, shouldn't i

Excerpt from the wikipedia page for the Swahili language:

"With the Germans controlling the major Swahili-speaking region in East Africa, they changed the alphabet system from Arabic to Latin. After the First World War, Britain took over German East Africa, where they found Swahili rooted in most areas, not just the coastal regions. The British decided to formalise it as the language to be used across the East African region..."

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 7

Stock photo of the standard yellow UK diversion sign, with an arrow pointing towards the right.

Weirdly it's nowhere near the road, they've just plopped it a few yards away from it in the grass saying there, that'll do.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Jun 6

reading an article chronicling the irapuato disaster (don't worry, nobody died, it's just hungary losing 6-0 to the ussr in their 1986 world cup opener) and i came across an amazing feature of football reporting from the time this is from france football and it's fucking brilliant

A scanned page from the 1986 World Cup edition of France Football, showing drawings of two of the goals scored in that game. The drawings look like a black-and-white comic book depiction of the action, with dotted lines representing the path of the ball, the names of the players written next to them, and their poses show what they did when they interacted with the ball.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 29

#MiniHungarianLanguageLesson: idiom friday i stole the below screenshot from somebody's post because it reminded me of a great hungarian saying coined probably in the early 2000s: "mindenki hülye, csak én vagyok helikopter" everybody's an idiot, only i am a helicopter

A google search asking "how many P's are in google?"

The AI answer is:

There are 2 "P"'s in the word "Google".

Google (0) -> Goople (1) -> propeller (2)

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 28

Screenshot from Civilisation 1 showing Gandhi and the caption:

"Greetings from M.Gandhi, ruler and King of the Indians...

Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 28

exhibit a

A self-caricature of John Lennon.

The glasses and the nose are two circles and an inverted Z in between, the mouth is a short, slightly upwardly curved horizontal stroke, and the hair is just two scribbles, one on each side.

And that's it.

It is recognisably a picture of John Lennon

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 24

Photo of a rhodochrosite cabochon (whew, that sure is a lot of h's for a phrase that doesn't need any) on a grey background

It is a pinkish crystal with striped white marbling that makes it look very much like bacon or some similar cured pork product.

Honestly, even the hue of pink in the crystal is pretty much spot on.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 24

one of my favourites of this genre is sadly no longer with us

Wikipedia table of sections box:

1. Before the Pig
2. Pig
3. Military escalation
4. Resolution

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 20

and of course

Terry Jones dressed as the classic Monty Python pepperpot, with the caption:

MR. HILTER'S STANDING AS A NATIONAL BOCIALIST CANDIDATE

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 18

a dk elmúlt éve dióhéjban

Screenshot Google Mapsről, nagyon bezoomolva. A 43-as úttól északra látjuk a Marost, az úton magán meg két szomszédos település: Ferencszállás és Klárafalva

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 18

A photo of Guy Goma, the man who was famously (and mistakenly) interviewed live on air on the BBC about some Apple-related lawsuit when he was only there for a job interview for an IT position.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 5

nem szeretnék ezügyben a sajtónak nyilatkozni

Idióta burger king logó-generátoros lófasz, a klasszik BK logóba a két buci közé, a "Burger King" helyére azt írtam, hogy "kőműves actimel", alá a tagline-ba meg, hogy "Igyál, az legalább meglátszik rajtad."

Nem, én se értem, mi jött rám.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· May 1

i have another one: when this ferris wheel was put up in downtown budapest, a lot of tourists were either baffled or absolutely pissing themselves with laughter cos the audio guide was talking about where to spot the clifton suspension bridge, the brunel's ss great britain and suchlike

In the foreground a lit-up Ferris wheel, behind him the Parliament building, the Buda hills and a wonderful purple-grey dusk sky.

Peter Ellis@almostconverge· Apr 24

i'm so mysterious that even my gp is mysterious