the brandensite

There's UrbEx and then there's this 2025 Apr 22
Urban Explorers like finding abandoned buildings and unlocked rooftops. And then there's these guys in Providence, Rhode Island who found an accidentally-created off-the-maps empty space in the middle of a shopping mall, and set up a secret apartment there for four years.

Old burial customs determine how couples are positioned 2025 Apr 22
Does it matter in which direction you are buried? I always felt I should be buried face down, with a good view into Hell.

But that's not what this local Lancaster, Pennsylvania (near Mennonite and Amish communities) article is about. Apparently, they say, "Most cemeteries bury husbands on the south side of a burial plot, with their wives on the north." Of course it's never quite that simple:

The other key factor, [Bart Delp of Delp Monument Company] notes, is that headstones can face east or west. The direction they face makes a big difference. ...

But in most cemeteries, headstones face east, which puts husbands to the left of their wives. "To make matters even more confusing," Delp adds, "many cemeteries have stones facing both ways. And then there's Brunnerville United Methodist, which buries the man on the right regardless of which way the stone faces."

But, why? Why on Earth (or Heaven, I guess) does any of this matter?

Delp says he has met many cemetery caretakers who claim couples are buried that way so that at the rapture, when they rise out of the ground, they will be standing as they were when married.

That is, while the husband lies to the left of his wife, their heads are close to the headstones. So they would rise in reverse – the husband to the right side of his wife.

"Take this," Delp says, "for what it's worth."

And what's so Damn important about facing east?

"When the Lord comes the second time," [Sam Stoltzfus] explains, "He'll come from the East." So the dead will rise correctly in greeting.

"Editor" uses "AI" to "create" a "Digital Executive," immediately sexually harasses "her" 2025 Apr 22
I wish I was making any of this up. But you can go read the screenshots and see for yourself, all this hyper-cringe bullshit is true – this perverted, thirsty creepo did exactly these things. I mean, at least he's not harassing real women, but what the fucking fuck. And then he went and bragged about it in an online article? How disconnected from reality do you have to be to think any of this is OK?

American National Exhibition 2025 Apr 21
In light of the Expo 2025 which I just got back from visiting in Osaka, Japan, I am remembering my history lessons about the time the American Government showed off how awesome is our propaganda machine during the height of the Cold War by bringing to the USSR an exhibit of our culture: Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollack, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson of Herman Miller, and Isamu Noguchi with his famous paper lamps were among those whose works were on display, Pepsi made its first inroads via backrooms deals to enter the Communist world in exchange for Stolichnaya entering ours, IBM showed off its 305 RAMAC answering questions from the audience (including pre-programmed responses to "thorny" questions about race relations and lynching), Richard Nixon (Vice President, at the time) got into a famous debate with Nikita Kruschev, recorded on an early form of videocassette, and President Eisenhower personally intervened to keep McCarthy's House Un-American Affairs Committee from blocking socialists from participating.

All in all, a bang-up job by the American Propaganda machine USIA (now defunct). Much better than this year's USA Expo Pavilion which was 25% ad for visiting America and the rest devoted to reminding the world about our country's space program, despite it currently being under attack by our idiotic administration.

The Divorce Tapes 2025 Apr 21
A horrific memoir of a family falling apart due to abuse, denial, paranoia, and dysfunction. Frighteningly gripping.

That Is ‘Pretty’ Awesome 2025 Apr 20
I'm not crying you're crying

Visiting Sentinel Islands for the Like & Subscribe 2025 Apr 3
The Sentinel Islands between India and Thailand are famous for the tribe of people indigenous to there for 60,000 years who have forever refused contact with the outside world. They have famously rebuffed all attempts from people to contact them, such as this moron from Alabama who in 2018 was killed by bow-and-arrow while attempt to illegally land there. Well, this time, the 24-year old American idiot was lucky enough to not get killed when landing on the islands and attempting contact in order to garner views for his YouTube channel. He's not killed, but is definitely arrested.

Versacad: About this Picture 2025 Apr 2
Versacad was never the biggest CAD software. It's been around since 1989 but the website hasn't been updated now since 2017, so I guess it's now defunct. But sometimes we need to open old Versacad files, if only to convert to modern formats when the still-existing structures built from those files need work done.

So I went to install Versacad and the background photo on the installer is ... well, not what I would have expected. Typically, software uses opportunities such as this to show off what it can create. Here, not so much. But it does have a button "About this Picture" which of course I had to go back and click. And so I present, a relic of what once was:

Best Printer of 2025 2025 Apr 2
Nilay Patel of the Verge on why, if you're looking to buy a printer, you should get a Brother, and also why these types of articles suck and are only getting worse.

The persistence of tradition: the curious case of Henry Symeonis 2025 Apr 2
What happens when you're so hated that the Oxford statutes personally snub you by name? What happens then when you're not memorable enough to be biographied in any other form, and your sole contribution to history is your legal snubbing?

Nowhere in the statutes did it explain who this Henry Symeonis (or Simeonis) was, what he was supposed to have done or why those getting their MAs should never agree to be reconciled with him. Who was Henry Symeonis and why was he specifically named like this in the University’s governing regulations? What had he done to offend the University so much?

In 2013, Oxford's Bodleian Libraries finally dug up the answer.