Researchers at KERN (the Kyle Eats Ridiculously Nook) have announced reactions of unprecedented energy. The upcoming paper is expected to place new upper bounds on the maximum mass of the T-Burgeron. Results from the TASTEBUD array and Digestive Calorimeter are said to be “off the charts.”

Quantum foam researchers are eagerly awaiting the results of the supersymmetric supersalad (S4) experiment, which is the first to explore symmetry breaking between feta cheese and fresh c-tomatoes. High activation energies in fork-lettuce interactions have long limited the experimental accessibility of the salad model, but new models of bound arugula-cucumber pairs suggest a “delicious island of stability” may lurk at larger plate sizes.

Continue reading (134 words)

Killing animals and eating them may be immoral, but can we please stop claiming humans are “naturally” vegetarian? We’re opportunistic omnivores, which probably has something to do with why vegans need to watch their diets carefully in order to have working blood cells.

Look at your teeth. Now back to me. NOW BACK TO YOUR TEETH. That’s generalized dentition, and appears in classic omnivores. Look left. It’s a chimpanzee, our nearest evolutionary relative. He’s killing and eating a Colubus monkey, their most frequent prey. Look down. What’s that in your gut? Oh that’s right; it’s a lack of a fermenting vat, efficient digestive enzymes for grasses, and inability to synthesize key vitamins and amino acids. Look again. THOSE DEFICIENCIES ARE NOW A COLONY OF SYMBIOTIC BACTERIA WHICH METABOLIZE ANIMAL TISSUES. I’m eating a horse.

Continue reading (186 words)

6:00 AM. Oh, snap.

I think I was supposed to be on a plane. This morning? Wouldn’t I have set an alarm for that? Yeah, the plane definitely leaves at 7. Today? I packed last night–it must be today. How long does it take to get to San Jose?

Continue reading (842 words)

Most Rubyists know about monkeypatching: opening up someone else’s class (often, something like String or Object) to modify some of its methods after the fact. It’s both incredibly powerful when used judiciously, and incredibly dangerous the rest of the time. I’ve spent countless hours trying to debug conflicting definitions of #to_json, or trying to untangle ActiveRecord’s astonishing levels of dynamic method aliasing.

I’m here to introduce you to a far more exciting threat: set_trace_func. This invidious callback is invoked on every function call and line of the Ruby interpreter. Most people, if they’re aware of it at all, correctly assume it’s intended for profiling.

Continue reading (874 words)

Yesterday I had a sore throat and it rained for hours and hours. I spent the whole time working on various side projects and playing Minecraft. As my new mining operation and tree farm are several kilometers distant from the spawn point, being eaten by spiders and walking five minutes back to the cave to get eaten again got tiresome. I needed pig meat–or better yet, delicious, even more life-sustaining bacon.

But pigs are hard to come by, and killing them is time consuming. Luckily, these delicious creatures will appear anywhere grass is present, which led to the construction of The Facility.

Continue reading (224 words)