awaymessage.club is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
a little Mastodon service for people who miss when the most social we got was carefully choosing song lyrics for our AIM away messages

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Getting back to read alongs because I’m already exhausted doing everything else I can to push back on societal collapse. Help me out, Mark.

If this is the level of diagram we’re at for this entire book, I’m already sold

Something deeply poetic and darkly hilarious about the pacing in this phrasing. Also, believe me, I feel it

“How strong is this force?”
“Oh, like, *so* strong. It can absolutely crush a soda can”
“…like, a full one or something?”
“No, like, one experiencing a vacuum”
“Huh.”

This is a weird version of Crazy Taxi. Also, very much enjoy that stinger

Nice to see this just called out plainly, here. Wild to think about how this made the wider world more real for so many people

Humphry Davy, the doctor who tested nitrous oxide as a cure for disease, discovered: getting stoned. It will not surprise you to find out that he immediately set up group hangouts with his artist friends to all “test” it together

What in the name of Protestant work ethics is this excuse for not caring for patients? This doesn’t even hold logical sense!

Samuel Colt, yes, that one, the one who makes the revolver, funded his early experiments in firearms by doing laughing gas presentations. And I need you to see the advertisement used for them, just trust me, there’s so much going on

K Brob

The number of people I know who embody this chaotic energy

Miodownik has this incredible ability to drop completely sincere statements into his text that are both charming and the beginning post of an absolutely unhinged thread

I found this so impossible to believe that I had to look it up: trumpets with valves really *were* invented in 1818. They’re younger than the United States.
This is a chapter about carbon dioxide, btw

I need to express just how silly and fun this chapter about carbon dioxide is. Miodownik really does have a gift for this kind of information sharing. I’ve laughed out loud more than once, like when he describes an inflatable bed as “anarchic”