A problem I’m having with the transition from social media to building my own place on the Internet is that I’ve not only gotten used to reading infinite scrolls of half-formed half-thoughts, I’ve gotten used to writing that way. I quit Twitter a while ago, but I keep thinking in tweets. And I’m not sure how to adapt the blog format, which is very leaned toward each post being a Major Event, to accommodate brainfart content. I’ve been writing them down in my journal, but I’m not sure if the format of just dumping a bunch of “tweets” on one page will make sense. However, another area of personal growth I’ve been working on is freeing myself from cringe-culture self-consciousness. So here’s some not-tweets I’ve written over the last couple weeks.
There are about 8.2 billion people in the world. Blood makes up about 10% of a person’s body weight. The average body weight worldwide is about 62 kg for adults. Figuring in children could be a lot of extra work, but very roughly: about 25% of the population is under 15 and the fertility rate is decreasing, so let’s just split a lot of differences and say they average half the size of adults. That gives as an adjusted average weight of 53.5 kg. This gives us a total worldwide human mass of about 438.7 million tons. This gives us a total human blood volume of 4.387 billion liters. This is a cube about 1.6 kilometers per side, which is, conveniently, about a mile.
Lake Okeechobee in Florida is unusually shallow for its size, so it varies in volume depending on weather and water use, but generally it holds about a cubic mile of water.
So now you know.
Something I learned from reading federal court records: if you’re about to hire someone to do something illegal for you, research the market first! If a professional hitman is asking for $5k or a high-end escort is booking for $100/hour, you are about to be either arrested or murdered.
The thing that makes polyamory difficult isn’t some natural human inclination toward monogamy or whatever. The thing that makes it difficult is set theory.
If two people are dating, that’s one relationship. If three people are dating, that’s three relationships. Four people? Six relationships. If a polycule has twenty people in it, that’s 190 relationships. (Not relationships as in each of the twenty people is dating all nineteen others, God help you, but in the sense of two people who relate to each other in some sort of way.)
So take the probability that any given relationship is going well and making both parties happy… and multiply it by 190.
This same math also applies to any sort of family or group of friends, of course, but people don’t jump down your throat and go “wow so maybe you need to reconsider this lifestyle” if you don’t get along with your uncle.
Conspiracy theory: the moon landings and other human space exploration of the era, while real, were an elaborate justification for the development of technology to be used in ICBMs.
I have absolutely no idea where this lands is on the scale from “Elvis and JFK are alive inside Hollow Earth” to “well documented historical fact.” Best argument against: NASA didn’t develop ICBMs and government agencies share technology about as well as toddlers share an iPad. Best argument in favor: doesn’t that totally sound like something the US would do?
The corollary of “may you have the confidence of a mediocre white man” is “may you have the sex life of an elderly German couple.”
Sanyo Foods, which makes Ichiban Ramen, has a page of recipes on their website. I expected it to be boring things like “have you tried putting an vegetable in it” and “salad or whatever.” It has some of that. It is also has: ramen dogs, ramen fried chicken, ramen burger, and ramen brownies.
In conclusion, the total human urine output of the world is very roughly 12.3 billion liters per day, which is 5208 CFS in whitewater rafting terms, which is approximately the flow rate through the Kennebec River Gorge on a moderate day, which looks like this:
I really, really wanted it to be the Yellow River, but, alas.
Comments
15 responses to “How do You Tweet On This Darn Thing?”
Woo, you’re back! I was missing the daily Cohost posts.
Uncle Lifestyle
Oh man, ramen brownies sound really good. …Damn, I recently developed an allergy to chocolate. (Just in time for Halloween! :/) Ramen blondies??? You know what, I’ve put worse things in blondies.
Ramen breakfast burrito. This sounds like something a college student came up with.
really love seeing posts like this. just the sort of thing we need spaces for that aren’t corporate nightmares
The NASA one doesn’t seem too conspiracy theory, seems a matter of degree to me.
I think it’s obvious that part of the support for big scientific projects was to “stay ahead of the Soviets in science (because of its military applications)” and it’s just a question of how direct the connection was. “The military directly funds space research and uses the results” or “Rocket scientists for the space race are good hires for military aerospace tech because of their applicable general knowledge”? Supply chains for space race could obviously also be used for military applications, so it’s murky where to draw the line there too…
yeah. the original American and Soviet civilian launch vehicles (the Atlas and Semyorka, respectively) were both converted ICBMs. the applicability of ICBM advances directly to human spaceflight ended as we set our sights on landing on other celestial bodies, because it takes a lot less fuel to bring a rocket down in Russia than it does on the Sea of Tranquility, but cutting-edge computer technology being deployed for ICBMs made it possible for the navigation computers on the Gemini and Apollo capsules to be built, whose advances trickled back down into both air and space applications for the US military after the moon shot; the early Soviet scientific space stations were operated by the Soviet military, and it later came out that some of them were armed with rudimentary antisatellite weapons under the suspicion that American astronauts would plan on attacking them.
so imo it’s pretty much historical fact, but also the story is a lot weirder than just being directly a skunkworks project for bigger and better ICBMs.
looking back, it’s a huge relief and also (by modern standards) seems like a miracle that everyone decided that militarizing space was stupid and dangerous and preemptively banned it, instead of a good way to justify additional military spending.
at least for 50 years or so.
laughed out loud at “set theory”. good post
This is great, please do more of these!
But I think you accidentally a decimal place on the blood volume? It can’t possibly be right that people pee out 3x their blood volume every day??
Hm. It was extremely napkin math and I think I might have turned gallons into liters at some point. Darn. I’ll try and see if I can figure out what went wrong.
I liked this format! I would also have liked it if you just posted each of these individually, tweet-style. This is your space, you can use it how you want.
I ran some fairly similar numbers to the Blood Lake thing when I was reading a snark-teardown of the Left Behind books that mentioned the Second Coming of Jesus killing enough people to produce “a river of blood several miles wide and five feet deep”. I mean, Jesus can presumably use his transubstantiation powers to generate the blood without a human source, but that’s still a lot of blood.
I don’t have a preference about whether you make many little posts or a few big posts. It works with my rss reader either way.
I do kinda miss likes. But that’s why I’m replying instead. No metrics just vibes. Your posts brighten my day whether there’s trackable engagement or not.
There used to be street vendor ramen burgers in Los Angeles that were really good, but I haven’t seen one in a long time… What happened…
I love your not-tweets! It seems to me that a blog can be anything you want it to be, and personally, as a reader, I’d love it if you made more little posts without a Big Point.
‘This same math also applies to any sort of family or group of friends, of course, but people don’t jump down your throat and go “wow so maybe you need to reconsider this lifestyle” if you don’t get along with your uncle.’
I feel like the guy who says ‘you need to reconsider this lifestyle’ about families might be Karl Marx. I think I remember that from the Communist Manifesto.
The ‘May you have the sex life of an elderly German couple reminded me of this.
My boyfriend (who’s in his 50’s) and his girlfriend (who’s in her 70’s) went on a rafting through the Grand Canyon trip. According to him some young guy on the trip asked ‘do you two always have to set up your tent so far away from everyone?’ And his response was ‘well…I have good news from your future…’
(Cause they were fucking. Every night. Honestly knowing him possibly multiple times every night.)
Thinking of you, Cliff. Sending you strength and love from across the ocean. <3
Oh this was a DELIGHT to read. I am reminded of the time some years ago that you took a Twitter break and read some of your not-tweets on video and it was similarly delightful.
(Also just generally in favor of the Return of the Blog tbh)
welcome back , cliff! i used to read this back in the before times. glad to see you’re still around!