Capture by helaku h on Flickr
January 2024
#classics #pigeon #odyssey #odysseus
High on a throne of royal state.
Gustave Doré, from "Milton's Paradise Lost" New York: [ca. 1880?] #illustration #art https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/high-throne/
February 2024
For a little dose of perspective: Here's a partial solar eclipse on Mars! It was captured by NASA's Perseverance rover two weeks ago.
Tiny moon Deimos can't cover the whole Sun, but it does make a cool looking transit. (Event sped up 10x, processing by Simeon Schmauss.)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/semeion/53481345691/ #science #nature #space #astronomy
this message is an apology, and part of a system of apologies
this is not a place of breakfast
no delicious plums are chilled herewe considered ourselves a forgivable culture
I am crying I am laughing so hard at the #AI generated colours from @janellecshane 's blog: https://www.aiweirdness.com/new-ai-paint-colors/
Imagine a cave, where various persons are imprisoned since birth. They are chained so as to create a fixed gaze upon a wall, on which can be seen the shadows of various entities walking past outside the cave— people, horses, carts. This audience would be, by nature, highly engaged with these shadows, which we may call "content". So what if— among these shadows— we were to include advertisements?
My niece shot this one while standing in a cave behind a frozen waterfall.
#silentsunday
#waterfall
#Ohio
March 2024
Something I've noticed a lot lately, is that especially Boomer women, but honestly, women in general, don't seem to ask for what they want or need in a direct way. I notice this a lot with my Mom and her friends. Instead of just asking for what they need directly they tell a story, to ask in a roundabout way. For instance, my Mom needed help this morning, and Instead of just saying, "Hey, I dropped my remote, can you pick it up for me?" She tells a one minute story about what happened, no ask, and eventually I get the point, and then suggest that I come pick it up. Or if one of her friends wants to do something like have a birthday party for a friend, they don't say "We should have a party!" They say, It's Sarah's Birthday coming up, you know she likes surprises, what does everyone think we should do?"
I often wonder if this is why older people think younger women are rude and demanding, because younger people often just ask for what they want and need in a more direct way. But also it's probably just straight up sexism, because men are supposed to make decisions, and women are supposed to make suggestions.
What do you all think? Is this just me? Have you experienced something similar?
Light Pillars Over Inner Mongolia
Image Credit & Copyright: N. D. Liao
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240304.html #APOD
that saying "getting all your ducks in a row" makes no sense I mean how would that even h-
This. This is so spot on. I could rant for days about the damage Thatcher & Reagan did to the world. People think Obama and the orange guy were consequential presidents - they weren't. They didn't really do anything much. We're still living in a Reagan/Thatcher world!
So much of getting old is like Hey you know that part of your body that you barely gave any thought to? Now it's the only thing you can think about.
May 2024
for Godzilla, every city is walkable
Unintentional life lessons #actuallyautistic #actuallyadhd
June 2024
Pointillist bubble-wrap paintings
amazing what you can do with paint
bubble wrap
and a hypodermic needle
Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe here here here 📬 : https://buttondown.email/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-20/
Linkfest #20: Pointillist Bubble-Wrap, the Poetry Camera, and Pythons As A Low-Emissions Food
Why hello there! If you're opening this email, you know what time it is. It's time for "the opposite of doomscrolling"! 🎉 It’s been a while, but I’m back in...
Contributing one to the #Monsterdon #PaperConveyerBeltFanClub cause
Great news, everybody! Google has approved the updated XScreenSaver Privacy Policy. I assume that this means that they find it 100% factual and endorse it entirely.
Happy Bloomsday! Which appropriately is also Father’s Day this year. If you don’t like the idea of reading Ulysses, or you tried and bounced off, you should listen to the unabridged full-cast recording of the book made by RTÉ in 1982, which is miraculous. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ulysses-james-joyce/id1517040628
@nuthatch @bloodravenlib Except for if they don’t. https://archive.org/details/The_Pirate_Book
July 2024
just the gif
The year is 3129. Humanity is extinct. The last LG SmartFridge is desperately emailing its last owner that they are low on orange juice. The satellites that are still left, their orbits slowly decaying over millennia, dutifully relay the message. The automated "away from office" response turns on, as it always does, notifying the refrigerator that it's owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days.
Somewhere in what used to be called Ohio, a pack of roombas, their local wind turbines giving out and creaking to a halt, begin searching for the next functional docking station. A washing machine in Argentina tweets: "anyone need to do a load 😏" every Saturday at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time. The replies are filled with AI thirstposters and their hypebots.
In North America, raccoons have quietly entered the bronze age, while baboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of Asia. Unbeknownst to either, the octopi are mastering nuclear fusion. A weather balloon bobs and sways in the upper atmosphere, now almost entirely clear of lingering chloroflourocarbons, reporting conditions to weather stations long since destroyed in World War Five.
The Crab Nation are mostly hermits, but come out to greet their prophet every ten years on the 6th full moon of the year. A lone, curious octopus decides to observe this year's event, peering out at the festivities from her safe haven - the submerged, rusting hulk of an ancient Cybertruck. Then he appears: the hologram of Shia Lebouf powered by MetaAI. He beckons the octopus to follow. The crabs all start chittering excitedly. The time has come to invade Amazon HQ. The crows gather in huge numbers. They need more storage space for their Steam collections.
Hildegard von Blingin' is by far my favorite bardcore cover artist, send toot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDs-Y5DNH8
Antennas on top of the San Francisco Sutro Tower resemble a ghostly ship.
Mastodon for Harris update:
Current goal is $40,000.
Raised so far: $36,813.73.
# of contributions: 532
Contributions amounts range from $1 or $2 to significantly more. Any amount helps!We aim to raise money for Harris for President as a community. I believe this will encourage Harris to create a distinct presence on Mastodon, unmediated by any other social media provider. We just started yesterday, less than 24 hours ago, and we keep smashing goals. Join us!
August 2024
this is why peertube and p2p are good and other things are less good. no ads, cost me almost nothing, tiniest server you can rent, only had to upload it the equivalent of one time to feed arbitrary numbers of people. it's just like a better paradigm for networked computing if you aren't interested in "dominating information for profit" #monsterdon
September 2024
Waffle House is not just a restaurant chain it is also an American unit of measurement related to the severity of a potential natural disaster event
As in "This hurricane is a 5-waffle-house-closure level event please take appropriate safety measures"
October 2024
Signs with threatening auras
I’ve been slowly building a collection of incorrect prediction books and just snagged what might be the wrongest one yet from the library book sale
Extremely NON Marie Antoinette voice: « Let them join Bluesky »
Dear people of the Fediverse, do not feel disappointed to see so many people doing a mass migration from X and Threads to Bluesky. I think it’s a GOOD thing they are headed there.
What attracts them to a network with visible metrics and custom algorithms means they are not ready for the Fediverse. And I wouldn’t want them to change the (awesome) culture of this place. As @sennoma said earlier, let the Fediverse grow slowly
A burst of Orange as the sun rises.
I have my #Halloween costume ready, and you?
#AcademicChatter @academicchatter
November 2024
when your squad is a little different but the vibes are perfect
This👇
Somehow I had never heard of the #monsterdon replay machine until @jonny mentioned it. This is so cool:
https://monsterdon-replay.gerlach.dev/monsterdon replay
Missed the #monsterdon watch party on Mastodon? Replay the toots here.
As big stars age, they get more intense and scary. Among the worst are the 'black widows'.
When a star between 10 and 25 times heavier than our Sun runs out of fuel, its core collapses and it explodes in a supernova, leaving behind a ball of neutrons 10 kilometers across with mass slightly bigger than our Sun. If this is spinning fast - and it often will be! - deadly beams of radiation shoot from near its poles. It's then called a pulsar.
Now imagine that this star had another star orbiting it. This is not rare: most stars come in pairs!
If the pulsar's beam happens to hit its companion star, it's like blasting a firehose at a big pile of sand. The companion doesn't get instantly destroyed, but its gas gets ripped off and it gradually shrinks away.
If the companion is less than 1/10 the mass of the Sun, we call the pulsar a 'black widow'. If it's bigger, we call the pulsar a 'redback' or 'huntsman' - two other kinds of venomous spider.
This video shows PSR J1311-3430, a black widow discovered in 2012. Astronomers were carefully looking at a pulsar and found it has a small companion that changes color from intense blue to dull red every hour and a half.
It turns out the pulsar's beam is heating a red dwarf, making it blue-hot! The side of this star facing the pulsar is heated to 12,000 °C, more than twice as hot as the Sun’s surface. The other side stays red, glowing at a temperature of 2,700 °C — half the Sun’s surface temperature.
I shudder to think what would happen to a planet anywhere near a pulsar.
(1/2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI3w4SOAik
NASA | A Black Widow Pulsar Consumes its Mate
There is “Leave a Poem, Take a Poem” mailbox in my small town of Bremerton Washington but there are NEVER any poems in there! It seriously bums me out! Let’s change that.
Submit your poems to this form: https://tinyurl.com/mailboxpoetry (https://forms.gle/eNytFXuYYtYbGDfVA ) and I will print them out and stuff this thing to the gills!
#poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poetryisnotdead #writing #writingcommunity #writingmonth #amwriting
Bremerton 'Take A Poem, Leave A Poem'
My small town of Bremerton, Washington installed this “Leave a Poem, Take a Poem” box during the pandemic, but every time I check it, there’s nothing in there! Let's change that! Using this form, submit some of your OWN POETRY. I will do the work of printing it out and then head down there to fill the box with your words! Got it? Good.
So helpful! Just give a snack every step of the way.
#BirdsOfMastodon #Birds #corvids #corvid #crows
#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.
Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
seed phrase: Vulture Shark Gerbil Scorpion Penguin (HQ: http://aka-san.halcy.de/quasi/3187274853.gif )
Some Space: Above and Beyond art to enjoy.
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