Posts by hatamoto

My teen life was dramatic. Fleeing to the coast to escape an abusive father and the homicidal "associates" he was deeply indebted to heralded my freshman year of HS. Ended up living on my own by the time I was 16, so high school went by the wayside as I joined the working world to pay bills. Good times, bad times, recession times, homeless times.

My teenage years were a disaster that I mostly endured by self-medicating with heavy doses of weed, sex and metal.

Things did, eventually, get better... but by then I was in my 20s.

From the merchant side of Paypal, all I can say is that it's a good thing for them that they're the only real game in town for people who can't go all the way and get a CC merchant account. They're shady as f*** and deeply, deeply hated. I can think of a dozen people just off the top of my head who would jump ship in a heartbeat if some other payment processor directly accepted credit cards in the way paypal does.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

There is no limit to the number of f***s I'm not giving.

Or the old standby...

I don't know if you'd find this "disturbing"...

A while ago I found out that Jupiter's moon Io is roughly the same distance from Jupiter that our moon is from Earth. That got me to wondering... what would Jupiter look like from the surface of Io?

Jupiter's diameter is around 40x that of the moon, and so from the same viewing distance it would look about 40x as large. So, say you're looking at the moon over the skyline of Seattle...

[Image 1]

It's difficult to imagine how large Jupiter would be relative to that. At 40x the size, Jupiter would occupy a full 20° of the sky! So my first try at imaging that was way off:

[Image 2 - Jupiter as 10x moon size]

No, it would look more like this:

[Image 3 - Jupiter as 40x moon size]

Most impressive, but we're not done yet.

Io, like most moons (including ours), is tidally locked to its planet Jupiter. That means the same face of Io is always pointing towards the planet. Jupiter would never "rise" or "set" on Io, the same way the Earth never "rises" or "sets" on our moon... however, you would get to see Jupiter go through its phases, from new, to full, to new Jupiter.

Unlike our moon though, which has an orbital period about the earth at around 27 days, Io is in orbit about a much more massive object, and so must go considerably faster to maintain its orbit. Io's orbital period is a mere 42 hours... so in any given (earth-length) day, Jupiter would go from new to full, or full to new. Given how huge it would appear in the sky, anyone watching the edge of the shadow would almost certainly be able to watch it move in real time across the face of Jupiter, visibly shifting from phase to phase.

Jupiter would have one more visual feast in store for the Ioian viewer as we moved into the "new" Jupiter phase. Every new Jupiter would be a full solar eclipse (and then some!), such that for a few hours out of every orbit, the sun's light would be completely blotted from the sky... but thanks to its intense magnetic field, the continuous aurora at its poles and intense lightning discharges from the ever-present storms in its atmosphere Jupiter would hang in the sky, looking like a giant, ghostly plasma ball ringed in flame from the backlit sun, contrasted against an inky-black sky filled with every star imaginable... except our own.

I suppose if there was a disturbing element to this, it'd be that any human observer on Io would almost certainly die a rapid death - Io's angry, sulfuric surface is constantly active volcanically, and the EM field from Jupiter would bathe our hapless astronaut in a constant wash of ionizing radiation. Our viewer would have to be robotic, or be willing to pay dearly for that view.

I could munge up the side of my face and pull off a Sandor Clegane. He's about my height and build. I've got Jon Snow's hair though.

The sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"...

This is the thread that does not end...

... it just goes on and on my friend...

Original Post by amethystgirl:

Original Post by karozel:

walk-in closet?? -- what about those who have come out of the closet??

Not to mention those who can't walk.

Straight-up ableism. For shame! 

Original Post by papillion_noire:

I went to a pagan/wiccan festival in college, and it was the only truly enjoyable religious/spiritual event I have ever been to.

Say what you will about some of the more snicker-worthy aspects of the religion, wiccans really know how to party.

You ain't been to a rager until you've jumped a fire. Jes' sayin'.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by roxysparkles:

I'm sorry, but "owner's bedroom", "owner's suite", and "owner's bedroom" just sound insane.

"According to the Washington Business Journal, 'master' reminds some people of 'slave-master"

So they replaced 'master' with 'owner'?  This has to be fake, right?

I may be mistaken...

... but weren't the masters "masters" because they were slave owners?