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What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

wtfnasa.com

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Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#41

Post by possibilistic »

jcbmllgn wrote: post #26

Hi HN, my name is Jacob, I'm the guy that made wtfnasa. Here's my tl;dr reaction to the virality that this project has seen: wtfnasa was not made to go viral, it was made to be a simple intro to CodeIgniter & a reaction to people upset with NASA, I put ~zero thought into having 'fuck' in the title, it was built in about 10 hours (design, build, data entry, & launch) last Wednesday & Thursday, it had 9 unique visitors…

Great job! I absolutely love this, and you deserve a huge pat on the back.

A few questions: How many items are in the database, and is there a chance we could get an itemized dump of them? School starts back for me on Wednesday and I would love to print off a dozen or two to post around campus. I'll gladly include a link to your site--it's fantastic.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#42

Post by freshhawk »

jacoblyles wrote: post #40
ericssmith wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"churches spend part of the money on social assistance" As a vehicle for proselytizing. Organizations that are dedicated to social assistance have reporting requirements that churches don't. It's not transparent at all what churches spend their money on. It's a murky government-sponsored wealth redistribution scheme. Not unlike the financial industry in that regard.

"As a vehicle for proselytizing." ...which produces more social assistance.

and the need for it.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#43

Post by adam_freidin »

jcbmllgn wrote: post #26

Hi HN, my name is Jacob, I'm the guy that made wtfnasa. Here's my tl;dr reaction to the virality that this project has seen: wtfnasa was not made to go viral, it was made to be a simple intro to CodeIgniter & a reaction to people upset with NASA, I put ~zero thought into having 'fuck' in the title, it was built in about 10 hours (design, build, data entry, & launch) last Wednesday & Thursday, it had 9 unique visitors…

you're not as crude as, say, http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com

I think this site doesn't need the crude language, it doesn't detract for me. In fact, I probably wouldn't have looked at it if it were PG, but ... I think I'm a minority in that respect.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#44

Post by sbmassey »

donall wrote: post #31
sbmassey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the swearword "fuck" is to signal that you are passionate and emotionally unrestrained about something, with a slight underlying threat of violence. Can someone explain why that is appropriate on this well crafted site?

No it isn't. That may be how you interpret it but it's an incredibly versatile word with semantics that are notoriously hard to pin down. In this case "what the fuck" is a well-established idiom. Many people don't even notice the vulgarity.

Sure it is. It's "incredible versatile" if you want to express how angry you are about something, because you can basically use it as either a drop in replacement or an intensifier for any word you want, but the common meaning is to express your emotional state. Look at the examples on wiktionary, for example.

As for "what the fuck" being a well established idiom - I guess that depends on your demographic, but I don't see it showing up much in the respectable media, or in academic papers.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#45

Post by jcbmllgn »

possibilistic wrote: post #41
jcbmllgn wrote: post #26

Hi HN, my name is Jacob, I'm the guy that made wtfnasa. Here's my tl;dr reaction to the virality that this project has seen: wtfnasa was not made to go viral, it was made to be a simple intro to CodeIgniter & a reaction to people upset with NASA, I put ~zero thought into having 'fuck' in the title, it was built in about 10 hours (design, build, data entry, & launch) last Wednesday & Thursday, it had 9 unique visitors…

Great job! I absolutely love this, and you deserve a huge pat on the back. A few questions: How many items are in the database, and is there a chance we could get an itemized dump of them? School starts back for me on Wednesday and I would love to print off a dozen or two to post around campus. I'll gladly include a link to your site--it's fantastic.

Thanks!

Right now there are 51 items in the database, I'll be increasing that number throughout the week with the goal of doubling it. Creating an itemized dumb is also on my to-do list for this week, I'll post something in here and link to it on the wtfnasa page once it's done.

-Jacob

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#46

Post by pyre »

ballooney wrote: post #25
bao wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Why did you think he is American? You can find cusswords distasteful and be from another country. B) Why do you think he doesn't like the F-word? It's possible to respect a word for its emotional power while thinking it gratuitous or counter-productive in some cases.

> A) Why did you think he is American? You can find cusswords distasteful and be from another country. A squeamishness around swear words ('cussword' is not a word I've ever heard a non-american use) is I'm afriad one of the perceived traits of America by other english-speaking nations, so from a purely Bayesian point of view it's an assumption he could make with some confidence. Just like we (Englishman here) don't…

  > or example, that a swear word or nipple on US tv
  > seems to cause comparable levels of outrage to a
  > shooting spree.
Welcome to America, where people will flock in droves to show their support of anti-gay marriage attitudes[1], while none of those people will lift a finger to volunteer at a soup kitchen to help out people that actually need the support.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A#Controversy_regardi...

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#47

Post by mattdeboard »

wisty wrote: post #10

Meh. The Swiss Patent office did more. Some of NASA's innovations are the result of its focus on solving the kind of problems no-one has tried to solve before; others are simply the result of so many talented scientists and engineers spending their time there. The question shouldn't just be "Was NASA worth it", but "what kind of new problems should mankind be working on". Deep sea research in another interesting doma…

Classic HN.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#48

Post by tsahyt »

MengYuanLong wrote: post #17
onli wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so fucking american. Swearwords are not not to be used. They serve its function, and here it is part of a well crafted site which is trying to make a point. edit: Though I agree with harrywincup that the wtf-approach at first seems like nasa did nothing good.

NASA is American... So, who is the target audience then? Is the author intending to persuade western Europeans to fund NASA? Swearing may be 'fun' but it still isn't what should be front facing for a business.

You're right about the funding thing, but this page is interesting to Non-Americans as well.

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#49

Post by tsahyt »

wisty wrote: post #10

Meh. The Swiss Patent office did more. Some of NASA's innovations are the result of its focus on solving the kind of problems no-one has tried to solve before; others are simply the result of so many talented scientists and engineers spending their time there. The question shouldn't just be "Was NASA worth it", but "what kind of new problems should mankind be working on". Deep sea research in another interesting doma…

It's the most exciting frontier to the general public though. Thank Sci-Fi ;)

Re: What has NASA done to make your life awesome?

#50

Post by donall »

sbmassey wrote: post #44
donall wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. That may be how you interpret it but it's an incredibly versatile word with semantics that are notoriously hard to pin down. In this case "what the fuck" is a well-established idiom. Many people don't even notice the vulgarity.

Sure it is. It's "incredible versatile" if you want to express how angry you are about something, because you can basically use it as either a drop in replacement or an intensifier for any word you want, but the common meaning is to express your emotional state. Look at the examples on wiktionary, for example. As for "what the fuck" being a well established idiom - I guess that depends on your demographic, but I don'…

Anger is not the only use case for the word "fuck", nor is expressing an emotional state. Really, there's a fuckload of other fucking examples; enough to make one tired as fuck just fucking thinking about them, so I won't enumerate them here (those readers who give a fuck can now exclaim "thank fuck!").

"Respectable" media are beholden to their advertisers, who in turn are concerned that specific demographics might be scandalised by certain words and affect their bottom line. I don't think HN or much of the internet fits into this category.

Academic papers are an interesting case. I suspect their avoidance of the word fuck is a combination of their inherited sense of propriety and the fact that such an ambiguous word as "fuck" rarely has a place in scientific writing.

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