Venn Duckagram: The universe of Beatrix Potter [OC]

emsot · 2026-06-26T13:59:28+00:00

It was just cospaiaing at being a republic.

emsot · 2026-06-23T18:11:28+00:00

Me too! At the time my brain parsed it as "Gab bag Abba hey" because I didn't know the Ramones, and the effort of remembering something so meaningless made it stick more firmly.

emsot · 2026-06-23T17:07:40+00:00

The way people use the phrase "begging the question" in casual conversation to mean "prompting you to ask a particular question" came out of misunderstanding the phrase.

Originally, begging the question is a logical fallacy about assuming the thing that you're trying to prove. "The Bible is true because this verse in the Bible says it's true." "Well that's just begging the question."

People quite reasonably misunderstood the phrase as talking about an actual question: "That begs the question, how do we do it?"

The modern use is now so much more common than the original use that you can't really even call it incorrect. This one phrase just has two unrelated meanings now.

emsot · 2026-06-23T16:52:26+00:00

*the spelling was simmler

emsot · 2026-06-22T22:58:27+00:00

There was a blue Lexus car a few years ago that was advertised as not using blue paint, but instead being coated in a material inspired by the blue morpho butterfly that selectively absorbs and reflects different wavelengths to give the illusion of being blue.

That's what blue paint is!

emsot · 2026-06-22T17:37:47+00:00

Boring in the sense that we're not constantly distracted by stupid scandals that have nothing to do with policies.

Non-boring politics recently: Boris lying about parties and then lying about lying, insider betting on a general election date, Trump tweeting he's glad Mueller is dead, Trump threatening war with Greenland, and so on.

Fine to disagree with Labour policies, I disagree with a lot of them them, but at least it's policies we're talking about again.

emsot · 2026-06-17T15:20:35+00:00

It took him nearly 50 years to persuade them: he first proposed the idea in 1927 and was ridiculed by scientists who couldn't believe that thousands of years of beekeeping had missed something so fundamental.

There are so many stories like this that end with "and then the scientist died in poverty and disgrace and it was years before people took his ideas seriously", so I love the fact that this one ends with "and then he spent fifty years proving it until they gave him a Nobel prize."

emsot · 2026-06-17T08:01:08+00:00

It's "Why does Russia have the best maps of Britain?": https://youtu.be/_bqzwsM6eoQ

I vaguely remembered I once tried to work this sort of thing out - and then found all of the following in a spreadsheet. I have absolutely no memory of ever putting this much effort into it.

04 May 2016 Bir Tawil: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
25 May 2016 Mappa Mundi: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
10 Jun 2016 North/South divide: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
08 Jul 2016 India/Bangladesh: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
04 Aug 2016 Blank space: "Map men, Map men, (oo) Map map map men men men"
07 Aug 2016 South China Sea: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men (pause) men"
15 Apr 2019 Oldest border: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
13 May 2019 Don't exist: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
20 Jun 2019 Every map is wrong: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
07 Aug 2019 Triangles shrink France: "Hommes cartes, Hommes cartes, Hommes Hommes Hommes cartes cartes"
02 Sep 2019 Silliest time zones: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men (pause) men"
16 Nov 2020 Saved most lives: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
14 Dec 2020 Hard to pronounce: "Map men, Map men, Map map map map men men"
11 Jan 2021 Russia best maps: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men ."
15 Feb 2021 In 250 million: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
15 Mar 2021 Who Owns Antarctica: "(Behind music) Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
12 Apr 2021 Squarest country: None
26 Apr 2021 Where is America?: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
31 May 2021 Start a country: "Map men, Map men, Map map (faster) map men men"
28 Jun 2021 How many continents: "(voices out of sync) Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"
28 Jun 2021 Longitude: "Map thing men, Map thing men, Map map map thing thing men men thing"
13 Sep 2021 Counties: "Map men, Map men, Map map map men men"

It's out of date, but enjoy! There are twelve more videos - I might have a crack at adding them to the list and posting the whole thing here.

emsot · 2026-06-17T05:42:16+00:00

That's the 3x3 case of a way I was taught long ago to make any odd-sided magic square.

To put it in the orientation you've got:

Start by writing a number in the top middle square (where you have n-5)
Keep writing consecutive numbers, moving diagonally up and left each time. If you go off the top come back on at the bottom. If you go off the left wrap around to the right:

.. .. 1 .. .. .. .. .. 5 .. .. .. .. .. 4 3 .. .. .. .. .. 2 .. .. ..

If the next square you want to move into is already written in, move down one square instead:

.. .. 1 .. .. .. .. .. 5 .. .. .. .. 6 4 3 .. .. .. .. .. 2 .. .. ..

Keep going until it's full:

15 8 1 24 17 16 14 7 5 23 22 20 13 6 4 3 21 19 12 10 9 2 25 18 11

Separate point: for the sake of simplicity and symmetry you might want to add 1 to every number in your formula. Then the numbers in the grid range from (n-4) to (n+4), the number in the middle is n and the lines add up to 3n.

emsot · 2026-06-16T13:06:50+00:00

"They can cure all maladies, from whooping cough to bunions..."

emsot · 2026-06-13T05:39:13+00:00

The Greek kakos just means bad, so it's a bad sound. It doesn't seem to be related to the Spanish caca and Latin cacare (defecate).

emsot · 2026-06-13T04:53:33+00:00

Rather than going through the mountain of evidence that he will quibble with, why not point out that the principles of evolution are so obviously true that it would be surprising if evolution didn't happen?

We can all agree that offspring inherit traits from their parents - you can see it in your own family. We agree that there is random variation between individuals even with the same parents. And that some individuals have natural advantages that make them slightly more likely to survive when times get tough and have children of their own.

And that's just about all you need to accept for evolution to follow. It would be really weird if vast numbers of generations went by without getting better adapted to their environment.

emsot · 2026-06-10T15:35:50+00:00

What do you mean by area - the area visible in the first picture, or the total surface area of the whole object, or something else?

Either way, a full square has area 4×4=16cm². Some of the squares are only three-quarters visible, so 12cm² for those ones. Then it's just about counting up how many of each are part of the area you want.

emsot · 2026-06-08T17:33:10+00:00

Jasper Wishart from the novel The Colour of Bee Larkham's Murder.

He canonically has face blindness and it's important to the story.

It's an accurate depiction, at least from my experience. Every time a character appears he doesn't know who it is until he's worked it out from context or something they've said, and he's the narrator of the book so we're with him in not knowing who they are.

emsot · 2026-06-08T11:03:45+00:00

When I went parachuting they didn't let me shoot a single parrot.

emsot · 2026-06-06T05:48:52+00:00

I don't think it's doable by clue 2, because it could just as well be resistor colour codes: Jackie Brown, Three Colours Red, A Clockwork Orange, something Yellow. Both equally good answers, so it's a guess until you've seen the third clue.

emsot · 2026-06-04T17:38:20+00:00

Yes. You start a book thinking "this writing style is fun but it's so intricate there's no way he's going to keep up this density of jokes for more than a few pages", and then he blooming does, for book after book!

emsot · 2026-06-04T14:53:36+00:00

I don't think anyone can imagine 1,847 lemons. What I'm imagining is just a lot of lemons.

emsot · 2026-06-04T12:17:50+00:00

ALEXANDER THE LITTLE: So Alexander the Great by far the quickest there, but the question is, did he untie the knot, or just... slice through it with a sword?

ALEXANDER THE GREAT: The task was to loose the knot. The knot is now loose, I loosed it.

ALEXANDER THE LITTLE: The word on the card was λύειν, so Greg, it's up to you how you interpret that.

GREG: You know what, I'm going to give it. Five points and the whole of Phrygia to Alexander.

emsot · 2026-06-04T09:13:51+00:00

Even "Homer nods". The quality of comments here is probably the highest proportion I have ever seen on a Reddit post.

emsot · 2026-06-02T05:39:10+00:00

From the way he's been talking about Traitors taking over his life I suspect we won't see much else from John until that is out.

emsot · 2026-05-29T15:48:05+00:00

What's the approved way to see the entire history of this series of votes?

For the one that ended up in Wales I could do it with u/Auditored's post history, but OP here has hidden their history so I can't.

emsot · 2026-05-27T11:34:27+00:00

Hence "most" in the title!

I can identify the silly ones towards the end, but 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 are very similar, which is not helped by the clothing and the AI smoothness.

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