Mike Wasson

@mikewasson.net

1000 Followers 822 Following

Pittsburgher in London. Tired. he/him.

stellaris screenshot: about to be attacked by six different 6+ star red fleets
“But you didn’t do anything” Tuxedo Mask meme
from clearsky, the poster was responding to "early morning mood in cairo [egypt flag emoji]"
Downing Street, Manchester
Facebook post and responses: Gladys Elvis Nwobodo: Be honest… would you live in this area of London? #London #londonlife #england Reply from Bill Lord: I wouldn’t live in London Full Stop Reply from Michael Bryan: Na not a chance I left there in 73 I could see the way it was going Attached to a video of the center of Muswell Hill, a very tony and well off part of London. See it for yourself: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1711840463267298
(b)United States currency has the inscription “In God We Trust” in a place the Secretary decides is appropriate. Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities. The name of the individual shall be inscribed below the portrait.
Map of Allegheny County, PA, with municipalities labeled. There's 96 of them. Sorry, alt text user, I'm not going to list them all, the entire point is there's way too many.
Western US--the great basin area seems to have a lot more water than it should (probably
Counties of Ireland, curiously out of order.
zoomed in ArcGIS map of Philadelphia wards circa 1900. Very tiny in Center City, the Northern Liberties, and South Philly, but kinda long and recangular in a weird way. Mostly east/west but a few north/south ones, like one that seems anchored by south 15th street. I dunno! Check it out for yourself: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=23c44278663f4b5b81dd62dfef0e24f7
Philadelphia Times, May 13, 1884 Burnett's Cocoaine, THE BEST OF ALL HAIR DRESSINGS It allays irritation, remove all tendency to dandruff, and invigorates the action of the capillaries in the highest degree, thus producing a vigorous and healthy growth of hair. Its effect upon the glossiness and richness of the hair is such as cannot be surpassed. BURNETT'S FLAVORING EXTRACTS are the best.
of Venezuela and Koaka of Guadalcanal, never resorted to formal battles at all. Raids and ambushes have been the most frequent and widely employed form of nonstate warfare because they are terribly effective at eliminating enemies with a minimum of risk. Raids characteristically kill only a few people at a time; they kill a higher proportion of women than do battles or even the routs that follow them; they kill individuals or small groups caught in isolated circumstances away from major population concentrations; and because the victims are outnumbered, surprised, and often unarmed, their wounds are often inflicted as they try to flee. Archaeologically, this pattern will thus be evidenced by four corresponding characteristics: burials of individual or small groups of homicide victims; women as a high proportion of the victims; burials sometimes located away from the major habitation zones (although raid victims were recovered and buried in the usual cemeteries); and evidence that most wounds, even on adult males, were inflicted from behind.19 Several isolated prehistoric burials in central Washington State fit this pattern precisely, and radiocarbon dates indicate that raiding went on in this region for over 1,500 years. Projectile points found embedded in these skeletons indicate that in some cases the killers were “foreigners.” Interestingly, the usual ethnographic descriptions of the tribes in this area—indeed, in the whole culture area of the Plateau—depict them as exceptionally peaceful. At a cemetery site in central Illinois dating to about A.D. 1300, 16 percent of the 264 individuals buried there met violent deaths and also fit the patterns expected for raid victims. Similar attritional violence is documented in prehistoric cemeteries in central British Columbia and in California, where burials of probable raid victims were accumulated over several hundred years. The homicide victims at the 13,000-year-old Gebel Sahaba cemetery in Egypt...[cut for length]
a person who was born in northern ireland, christened in england, died in north carolina, and was buried in new york. seems sus
Hanoria Shelly, formerly Croke
Chinese restaurant glossed in English as “Mao Magic”
Much Hadham
A cocktail bar called "And Then Tooting." (Tooting is a neighborhood.)
“Nothing says representative government like a primary costing more than a moon mission in 1962 shekels.” Screenshot of an AIPAC tweet showing that Ed Gallrein received over $15 million in funding from, well, I don’t really care, that’s not the point of this
Excerpt from the first page of some Google search results (admittedly near the bottom) search query: mass produced blues brothers statues search result: Wikipedia page for "Terracotta Army"
57 councillors. 28 Green, 21 Labour, 8 Lib Dem.
A council somewhere in England. Previously Conservative, they said: yes, actually, we need more conservatives. Please. This is clearly a party that is going somewhere, is exciting, and is, above all, *competent*. Labour had been the main opposition--and remain so--but about a third of them lost to some combination of Reform, Green, and the Tories.
BBC screenshot: 47 of 136 councils have declared
excerpt from the Guardian; period outside quote
Age range question on a job application. For some reason they made it checkboxes instead of radio buttons. (But ethnicity had radio buttons!)
Job posting for a “Lead RPG Developer” job. Alas RPG is a fairly old la gauge developed by IBM that mainly seems to be used by banks running ancient hardware
“I was made an honorary Jew by The Jewish Times," Warlow says. "A lot of people say they just forget it's me on stage and that, for an actor, is ...
Selection from a demographics survey where the user has to choose their ethnicity. There are only three options under "White": English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British, Irish, and Gypsy or Irish Traveller. I usually choose "White - Other" when that's an option, or obviously just "White" if I'm dealing with a US based company. Once I saw "White - American".
Frank Grimes telling Homer “good heavens! This is a palace.”
yeah wild seeing the takes about self determination today like... yes of course the descendants of british colonisers are going to vote to be british
From Judit Polgár’s Wikipedia page: She was the top-rated woman in the world from January 1989 until her retirement from competitive chess in 2014, remaining No. 1 until the March 2015 rating list;[b] her record of 26 consecutive years as woman's No. 1 still stands.
analysis of a leetcode solution: I've solved it in O(N^2) when O(N^3) is the target ideal solution. Ah, but the constant factors!
victoria 3 world map. a distressingly large portion of it is uruguay
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been invited by councillors to relinquish his inherited Freedom of the City of London. The disgraced former prince received the honour in 2012 "by virtue of patrimony", due to his father Prince Philip having been a Freeman. Despite calls for the title to be removed, the City of London Corporation (CLC) previously said the honour, which historically allowed its recipients to walk sheep over London Bridge with no tariff, cannot be taken back.
Minerva, the Apocalyp.. @minerv... • 2h If a bunch of italian nazis revived latin as a spoken language to rebuild the roman empire on the basis of ethnic supremacy it would 100% no longer be a legitimate language
Uruguay's restless eastern provinces
A brick arch in what I’m going to call, ex posterior, a Georgian classical revival style. Half of it is being held up by some pretty intense steel bracing
4 Anglo-Canadian Protestant Laborers in Nunavut are supporting 3,040 dependents
victoria 3 political lobby: "anti-italian association" their flag is red with the hammer and sickle
2053 Victoria 3 East Asia map. Does any of it make sense? No. But what makes the least sense is a lot of it is a light brown representing the oppressive empire of URUGUAY
Yes! That’s definitely John Adams, and it’s a real, well-sourced quote. In a letter to Abigail Adams dated around 12 May 1780, he wrote: “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
a Facebook reel saying "this doesn't look like London...but it is" in front of a scene that looks pretty Londony
deterministic code generation from an llm, as described
Book recycling bin. Books first resold then recycled. Can’t be opened
A collection of Hebrew books
somebody put me on lists called "Anti-Democrat Activist" and "Fossil Fools." I think I'm most annoyed that they can't decide if lists should be singular or plural.
Victoria 3 (with some mods) randomly generated character named Alf War. He's an exiled Australian agitator, of the petite bourgeoisie, and supports corporatism. He's 44 years old and is beloved. He's a dapper dandy fellow, in a top hat and dashing overcoat.
In a statement, the Home Office said: “Public information advising dual nationals to travel with a valid UK passport or certificate of entitlement has been available since October 2024, including official guidance on gov.uk”.
**Sentence 6:** 況這猢猻隊子，斷難尋別弄之蛇；兼之狼狽生涯，豈還待守株之兔。 - Review: Two more parallel clauses. 猢猻隊子 = troop of monkeys = the literary crowd / hangers-on. 別弄之蛇 = a separate snake to play with — possibly alludes to 畫蛇添足 (adding legs to a snake, i.e., doing something superfluous) or simply means there is no other distraction to be found in that crowd. 狼狽 = literally wolf-and-badger (two mythical creatures said to be mutually dependent and thus always in trouble), meaning a wretched/embarrassed situation. 守株待兔 = the famous idiom of the Song farmer who caught a rabbit that ran into a tree stump, then waited there forever for another — passive waiting for luck that will not come. - Translation: Moreover, this troop of monkeys offered no other snake to play with; and given his wolf-and-badger circumstances, why go on waiting for rabbits at the tree stump?
A window describing a potential war where the United States would try to conquer the Irish state of Hokkaido
Google Earth photo of Hotspur Stadium. The stadium itself is bowl shaped. And then there's another similarly-colored building to the north that looks like the tank of a toilet. Really hammering it home is a large slogan just above it, visible to airplanes and people who look at too many online maps: TO DARE IS TO DO
Emmerdale promotional photo
Not Going Out, Series 13
map of England, showing a northwest to southeast diagonal that is labeled as having 31 million people, while the rest of England has 27 million people.
Wikipedia text excerpt: The (bolded) West of England is an area of South West England
a gigantic ice sculpture, supposedly in Harbin, China, which gets really cold. It's from six years ago so not AI. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/eljawn/giant_train_sculpture_made_of_ice_in_harbin_china/
Map of the UK, with counties/municipalities colored by plurality national identity. England is mostly English, Scotland is extremely Scottish, Wales is mostly Welsh (more so in the south valleys), and Northern Ireland is a bit more complex but Irish vs British identity largely follows Nationalist vs Unionist lines. There are two exceptions--two further places that are British--that I can see: London and Leicester. A bit different from the British parts of NI.
from the Wikipedia page on the Linear Pottery Culture: The name depends on specialized meanings of "linear" and "band", whether in English or German.[10] These words, without archaeological qualifiers, do not accurately describe the decoration.[11] There are few bands running horizontally around the vessels, and the incised lines are primarily curved rather than straight.[12]
Frinkiac riff on the Poochy episode. "Whenever someone mentions Kemi, all the other characters should be asking 'Where's Stephen?'"
my account name with some of my labels under it, notably "Posts a lot: more than 50 times yesterday"
The expanding matter theory came to me at 3:00 A.M. one day. I woke suddenly and sat straight up in bed with the idea fully formed in my head. I don't remember if it was inspired by a dream. At first, I thought it was either brilliant or totally stupid. I still don't know which it is. I first floated the idea in my Dilbert Newsletter, knowing that a million people would read it and some of them would surely write to tell me how stupid the idea was. I wrote it up as a whimsical theory from my cat Freddie, thu~ putting the blame on him. To my surprise, I received no reasonable criticisms of the theory. Instead, I heard a story about one physicist who had seriously pursued the same theory years ago, with