No Aurora borealis for me, it started snowing again and I had to bring the camera in. But one of the Tree Sparrows took some mug shots today! I rarely ever get these on this setup, so I was pretty excited. Hopefully light is better tomorrow and it returns. You can nicely see the details I talked about the other day - the bi-colored beak and the spot on the chest.

How it feels to settle into bed and close my eyes and return to the totally made-up scenario I was last engrossed in

My poster for Pluribus episode 109, La Chica o El Mundo. Fun fact: I had half of a different poster drawn, and scrapped it because I couldn’t get this scene out of my head. Kusimayu convulsing, affecting the smile, the village just… stopping. And then she walks away from the baby goat. Just crushing, the whole thing. So of course, what better way to digest that than by spending a few days drawing it. Yeah. So anyway, that’s a wrap on Pluribus season one, and a wrap on my posters! Thanks so much to everyone who liked and shared these posts and took the time to leave a nice comment. I sincerely appreciated it, a lot. It was a rough year in which I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for art making, and it felt really, really good to have a project again. I’m not sure what’s next for me, art-wise, but I’ll definitely be back for season two of Pluribus whenever it happens!

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

For the painting especially there’s a beauty in depicting some of our most advanced technology as synonymous with the most ancient. Very few people throughout history have had the privilege of seeing the face of Jupiter but many would recognize the sling thrower immediately.

So my sister is on vacation and has sent me a photo of the store she was buying clothes in.

I'm going to lose it.

Yesterday, Disney asked users on Threads to use Disney quotes to show how they are currently feeling. To say that this did not go according to Disney's plan would be an understatement 😂

They deleted the thread, but they should know that this doesn't help because now the videos are making their rounds 🤣😂

Suddenly, new paws! (For LeafyEverAfter)

quark ds9 sucks in a very peculiar way and i just don't think you could replicate it with any other guy honestly. it's just him that does this.

no hope for you like at all

Bastard Son Neptune Says Trans Rights!

coyote-and-teddy-bear.png

fish chips!! ✨

09/05/2025

Obsessed with how Murderbot and Perihelion were literally made to be together. Secunits were designed to interface with multiple larger systems like hub and med systems and to be part of a much larger network of bots and programs. ART is, essentially, a hub system that can react and interact with the other pieces of its systems in ways most hub systems can’t. It has the capacity to feel emotions but lacks the experience and inputs to be able to fully understand some of them until it uses Murderbots systems. Murderbot doesn’t have a deep understanding of humans and how to pass as one which ART gladly provides. ART cares deeply about its crew but can’t follow them into dangerous situations but Murderbot can. “Mutual administrative assistance” takes on a much deeper and more intimate meaning when it’s taken with the context of a software programs and its hardware counterpart.