Falling Leaves @a-little-bit-scary - Tumblr Blog

Hi! I offer tarot reading! Here is a little menu of what I offer:

- 1 Card: $5

- 2 Card Decision Maker: $5

- 3 Card: $10

- Weekly: $15

- Celtic Cross: $25

I do monthly (4 weeks) and yearly (52 weeks) rates for all of these pulls and will give prices for those if asked. If doing a monthly or yearly, I would want the payment up front.

Thank you.

#tarot #tarot readings #tarot reading #witch #tarot witch #tarot cards #tarot business #lgbtq witch #lgbtq tarot reader #lgbtq business #lgbtq

witchthewriter

for anon.

analog-machine

@a-little-bit-scary

a-little-bit-scary

Yesssssss this gives me joy and happiness!

sandersstudies

I think a fun way to have he/she pronouns would be by helping other avoid the ambiguous antecedent problem and taking on the pronouns that are less represented in the current group.

sandersstudies

Neopronouns? More like Nemopronouns am I right

official-linguistics-post

official linguistics post

sacred-portal

kurhanchyk

are you okay i noticed you reblogging "a raven with a damaged wing. it can still fly with ease" again

bird-doodles-daily

hometoursandotherstuff

hms-no-fun

so i feel the urge to add a bit of context here because i find the vague on-screen text deeply underwhelming.

this is not just "a picture", it's Pale Blue Dot, one of the most famous works of astrophotography ever made public. and it was not just "a dying spacecraft", it was Voyager 1, a probe launched in 1977 to study the atmosphere and moons of Jupiter and Saturn, among other things. both Voyager probes carried on them a golden record meant as an introduction to humanity for any alien species that might discover them (if you saw Kane Parsons' Backrooms, you've heard the contents of that record coming out of a cardboard caveman standee). they did this because NASA planned to sundown these probes by letting them drift out of the solar system to parts unknown. Voyager 1 is currently 16 billion miles away, the farthest any manmade object has ever traveled from earth.

AND it's not even dead! despite supposedly being a "dying spacecraft" all the way back in 1990, Voyager 1 is not expected to be fully out of commission until 2036. to keep the probe alive they've switched off unneeded tools, adjusted its trajectory, even essentially updated the firmware, and through all that time it's basically never stopped sending back priceless data for scientists to analyze.

this is the original Pale Blue Dot, by the way:

it's relevant because "a single point of light smaller than one pixel" makes a lot more sense in the context of the original than it does in the heavily corrected version up top, where our pale blue dot looks more like a vibrant dwarf star. the difficulty of spotting earth in these waving curtains of space IS the entire impact of the picture! the blue dot is "pale" because it's hard to see! by making earth stand out so brilliantly, Terribly Interesting have inadvertently created the impression that earth is this vibrant glowing pearl, bright for all to see for billions of miles around. and it just isn't! the point is not that we can see earth from far away, but that we almost can't, because we aren't the center of the universe! when science educators past have used this image they often referred to one where the earth is circled in bright red, which only further emphasizes how small and fragile our home really is.

but hey, if you DO want an improved version of Pale Blue Dot you don't even need photoshop:

this is Pale Blue Dot Revisited, released by NASA in 2020. this is a reinterpretation of the original data using modern image processing techniques to create a more realistic or at least more high-definition rendering of the scene. it's important to understand that this is not the original image dropped into photoshop and airbrushed. strictly speaking, there isn't an "original" Pale Blue Dot the way there are negatives of traditional photography. astrophotography is almost always the product of raw data being deliberately interpreted by scientists, so the same data can produce many different images (ie if they want to emphasize the infrared spectrum vs visible light). similar work was done by Don P. Mitchell in ~2005 to enhance images taken by Soviet Venera probes of the surface of Venus to be less noisy.

here's an original:

and here's Mitchell's version:

i'm not here to argue which is "better" (and i highly recommend you read the source for this one because it's quite fascinating), just to give another example of the process in action and hopefully clarify how it's distinct from editing a jpeg in photoshop. also i just think it's neat!

which is the real reason i went to the trouble of making this post. Terribly Interesting may indeed find all of this to be terribly interesting, but it appears to be interest for the sake of a vague transient feeling of having been interested and little else. it doesn't name the probe, the photo in question, nor does it give historical context for the mission it was part of. the only substantial thing it says about the probe, that Voyager 1 is a "dying spacecraft", is so frustratingly oversimplified it may as well just be a lie.

so what's actually learned here, if you're someone who knows none of this history? that one time there was a thing and it did a thing? earth tiny from far away?? obviously it's just one image macro but i see this kind of thing making the rounds SO often, a screenshot with like two sentences on it explaining the image with as little descriptive text as possible. it's like there's a space-themed inspiration-posting rulebook that says you can't imply the existence of information not contained within the image. mention NASA? mention Voyager 1? mention Pale Blue Dot? nope! "a dying spacecraft" took "one last photograph", and here's a photoshopped version to make earth more visible.

and it might not even get to me nearly as much if this was any other space photo. i could accept that space stuff is complicated and this kind of fast-food image can only say so much if we were talking about Cassini or JWST's role in helping us find exoplanets. but this is Pale Blue Dot, the brainchild of arguably THE science communicator Carl Sagan! he wrote a book about Pale Blue Dot, he was on TV to announce the image personally! it's arguable that no astrophotograph exists whose context has been more digestibly packaged for laymen than Pale Blue Dot, which just makes it that much more egregious when someone doesn't go to the trouble.

so much of what i love about astronomy and studying the past & future of space travel is that everything you can learn is a doorway to learning more. you can't earnestly read about Voyager or Cassini or Venera or any other mission without finding some odd searchable detail and going "wait, what is that" and immediately falling down an hourslong rabbit hole to find an answer. and you'll never reach the bottom! i love reading articles about cutting edge astrophysics written for people in, like, early grad school, because i fully comprehend maybe 10% of it, vaguely understand 20% (on a good day), can kind of wrap my head around 30%, and find the rest totally inscrutable... but that's still a solid 60% scrutability rating even at the lowest-quality end of the spectrum! i'm no expert and i never will be, but in scouring the written expertise of others i almost always find one or two ideas that end up sticking with me forever. and it starts, every time, from questions about a photograph.

the sin of the above image is that it's solipsistic. it doesn't give you anywhere to put your curiosity or interest, doesn't invite you to leave their website and learn more than they have space to share, it doesn't even tell you anything useful about its subject! it reduces the entire history of Pale Blue Dot down to a vague and nondescript wonder that's just a pale imitation of the highly specific and ideologically driven wonder that Carl Sagan wanted us to feel.

here, feel it for yourself:

----

[P.S.: before you lament that this is an "AI" problem, while yes "AI" has radically increased the volume of low-value (often negative-value) inspiration bait like this, know that this has been a problem in online science education for a LOT longer than chatgpt's been around. this example isn't extraordinary, just close to my heart. nothing new under the sun and all that]

hms-no-fun

lmao someone else got their knocks in on this post before i could finish writing mine. clearly we are hand in hand re: Talk About How Cool Voyager 1 Is You Fucks

💬 0 🔁 109 ❤️ 245 · Okay, I need to add some clarification and correction to this. This photo is known as The Pale Blue Dot. It was take

idrawsnoopyeveryday

241.

sandersstudies

EVERYBODY post your struggle/lazy/easy/low spoons go-to meals so when we all struggle next we can explore the notes.

Flavored brats/sausages with cheese or fruit etc can be delicious air-fried and plain, and wrapped in a paper towel and eaten by hand without dirtying plates and cutlery. (If you’re up to it, add buns/side/toppings to your ability level.)

sandersstudies

Hey I’ve been having a lot of generalized fatigue recently and I appreciate the notes on this post, so I thought I’d put it back in circulation.

earthkinintellectual

microwave a potato for ten minutes, then cut into chunks and smash on an olive oil-ed baking sheet. Bake in oven for 20 minutes at approx. 450 F with other veggie of your choice. Salt and spice/ top with whatever you like, I did chili oil today. Nutritionally reasonable and vegetarian

gothiccharmschool

Rice made in the rice cooker, using whatever carton of broth I have on hand. Add some butter, mix an egg into it, and microwave for a minute to make sure the egg is cooked. Top with shredded cheese if you want.

a-little-bit-scary

1 pouch Mexican rice (microwavable)

Frozen/refrigerated cooked chicken chunks (can use canned as well)

Frozen/canned corn

Canned black beans

Cheese

1) rice in microwave

2) make chicken hot/open and drain chicken can

3) make corn hot

4) make beans hot

5) mix

6) CHEESE

It can all be done in the microwave and can be made 100% from the dollar store or even vegetarian by using a meat substitute or just leaving out the chicken. I didn't add seasonings to the list because when I make this i usually am feeling bad so I just have the seasonings in the rice and that's almost too much. But you can definitely add whatever seasonings you like!

#low spoons #low spoons meals #rice #rice based meals #chicken #chicken meals #corn #black beans #cheese #protein #fiber #healthy

glittervermin

notlayingroses

in my opinion, the question isn't "Is RPF ethical?" but rather "Are you engaging with RPF ethically?" and even more importantly, "Are you being stupid about it?"

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

But just have some basic decency and do not involve the real people. Don't cross the line without caring how it affects them. This is basic fandom 101 and lately we have been flying too close to the damn sun! Everyone get more normal about RPF so major news outlets and magazines stop posting articles about "Is RPF ethical?" and blowing up our spot!