Plastic, like all organic materials, can deteriorate in a
variety of ways. This degradation can cause changes to its appearance and
physical properties. Deteriorating plastics are found occasionally in the
Official Military Personnel Files held in St. Louis
when plasticized identification cards
were kept with the record. Some plastics, like this Navy ID card, shrink as
they age. The photo inside the plastic has been forced into a severely confined
space over the years as its plastic housing has contracted. Although physically
distorted, the photograph itself is chemically stable. Once free of the
plastic, the photo ID only needs to be relaxed with gentle humidification to
become flat again.
Another ID card issued to a Marine was laminated in a plastic
that became sticky over time and oozed out of the card making the edges sticky.
At some point, it was placed into a plastic zip bag used by the Navy as a
âdocument envelopeâ in order to contain the sticky deterioration. This plastic
envelope also deteriorated, yellowing and contracting. Inside, the entire bag
became one sticky mess. The original plastic laminated card has been
removed from the plastic envelope and is now housed in a polyester sleeve
meeting archival specifications. Unlike the âdocument envelopeâ we found the
card in, this sleeve is stable. (Those plastic sleeves you buy at the office
supply store may also be polyester, but they contain additives and slip agents
that make them more attractive products so that they are clear and paper can
slide in easilyâbut can deteriorate over time.)
For laminated paper, additional conservation
treatment are available but are time-consuming. Although readable as it is, the paper has become
translucent due to the laminateâs adhesives and will continue to deteriorate
inside the laminate card. Since we do not have the resources to do further
treatment for this ID, we have made a preservation photocopy for the file and
will keep the original card in its new sleeve in the record.Â
every now and then tumblr reminds me that my dad asked for a furry pic for his 57th birthday
might as well tell the story behind that
so, my dadâs birthday is coming up, and since he doesnât text, ever (heâs luddite that way), i text my mom: âhey, can you ask dad would like for his birthday?â
her response is âwell he really likes your animals, why donât you draw (our real-life dog) in that style?â
now bear in mind my mom doesnât get what i do, or my dad for that matter, so i figure that she doesnât understand the ramifications of that suggestion. she doesnât quite see how slapping two hands and a pair of breasts on our real-life dog would be fucking weird.but note also that it was a suggestion that she came up with, not him, so i reply:
âcan you just ask him yourselfâ
she responds âi was just giving you an idea, why donât you ask himâ
âhe never textsâ
âi will tell him to text youâ
and that brings us to
so the lesson is, my mom knows my dadâs tastes much better than i do
movie idea: guy finds a stone tablet engraved with a mysterious alien language and gets caught up in a national treasure-esque adventure to decipher its meaning, only to learn that itâs just an alien âlive, love, laughâ decoration
My favorite part about this post is that it infers that thereâs an alien suburban mom demographic.
itâs honestly hilarious how âdid you just assume my gender?â Is a Funny Meme⢠to cis people now bc in what universe is it ever safe to ask that question outside of like a very trans inclusive safe space. In what universe am I ever going to able to correct someone I just met on my pronouns or gender without feeling overwhelming fear for my personal safety? you fools just want to view us as irrational idiots who have no grasp on reality so that YOU donât have to face the reality that your âtrans people wanting to be themselves and be respected is funny/an inconvenience to me/a load of bullshitâ rhetoric literally ends lives.
Sometimes I think about how many little things we probably do every day that would totally mess up the reasoning of a Sherlock-Holmes-style detective.
Like the other day we went to the cinema and I was wearing a shirt with no pockets so I put the ticket in my trouser pocket. Â The next day I was wearing the same trousers and I put my hand in my pocket and found the ticket there.
Now, I have a certain selection of things I always have in my trouser pockets and I donât really like having anything else in there because it confuses my hands when I want to get something, so I took the ticket out. Â And I wasnât near a rubbish bin, but I was wearing a shirt with a breast pocket. Â So I put the ticket in the shirt pocket.
And I thought: if I get interestingly murdered, the Sherlock-Holmes-style detective is going to deduce that Iâm wearing the same shirt that I wore yesterday. Â Because itâs got a cinema ticket in the pocket with yesterdayâs date on, and why on earth would anyone put a cinema ticket in the pocket of a shirt unless they were wearing the shirt when they went to the cinema?
Which is a bit of reasoning we would all find totally convincing if it came from a Sherlock-Holmes-style detective. Â But it would be wrong. Â Because actually there are so many other explanations for things once you take account of the fact that people are often slightly eccentric in completely trivial and unguessable ways.
âSamuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person whoâd take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, âAh, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,â and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a manâs boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because heâd been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!â
Does anyone else with anxiety get that thing where you just want everything to be quiet and when itâs not, you just get really agitated, and peopleâs voices just start driving you insane?
