skylarking

I like cats and boats and bodies of water. fandom often. marine navigation rants sometimes. he/him. Tengo Puerto Rico en mi corazón. 30s. Let me know if you need tags.

[boatcats]

It's me. Boatcats.

[campsis]

Eden Kalif, Good Cats

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupidest things that someone could say,” says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the book More Everything Forever, which outlines the messianic, sci-fi fantasies of the tech oligarchs. “There are so many reasons why it’s such a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”

What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us

[wire-smith]

I really like sci-fi stories where people have to go off and terraform a planet, or figure out how to rebuild civilization after some disaster, or ideally both. "The last ark-ship leaving Earth right before it becomes uninhabitable" sort of deal. But lately I've been coming around to this same idea, that it will always be more practical to try to save Earth than to try to start over elsewhere.

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

And this is really true of any futuristic apocalypse scenario. If you can terraform Mars to have a thick oxygen atmosphere, why not just do that to Earth? Even if you smash an ice comet into Earth and destroy basically everything, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars! It'll still have roughly the right atmospheric pressure, and magnetic field, and heat balance, and it'll still have whatever life the comet didn't kill... Same with a starshade to cool Venus. Same with excavating asteroids into city-stations. Same with abandoning Sol System entirely and heading to another star. If an ark-ship arrived in a new star system and found Earth-but-choked-by-climate-change, the crew would be ecstatic. They would never have thought to get that lucky. So why bother with the trip? Just stay and fix the damn Earth.

[boatcats]

This is so funny from the maritime perspective, too. You know - actual life boats. Because one of the main tennants in any abandon ship scenario is that it is paramount to stay on the ship for as long as you possibly can. Your likelihood of surviving does go down when you get into the lifeboat. And there are times when it IS safer in the lifeboat (or life raft) than on the ship. But that decision of When you hit that tipping point can change everything. And even when you do abandon ship it's a good idea to stay as close to the ship as safe and practicable (because the ship is a Big radar target and has a last known position that someone, well, KNOWS) (unless you CAN'T and there ARE times you can't)

So like. Ah yes. Mars. A lifeboat. Let's all just get in the lifeboat because we had an engine failure or small galley fire. Surely that's a great idea.

[yesterdaysprint]

Thames swan shares a treat, 1958

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @chiropteracupola !!

[genderoutlaws]

Gilbert Baker helps hoist one of the two original rainbow flags created by the decoration committee for San Francisco Gay Freedom Day | 1978 | ph: James McNamara, lead seamster of the flags

[bowelfly]

the gherkin inspector

[earhartsease]

Brother Picholas

[boatcats]

Seven (or, well, nine) Sentence Sunday Tuesday

Thank you to @sanguinarysanguinity for tagging me. I started the fic where Maria Hornblower gets a job!

They were sitting by the fire when Maria broached the subject. "Horry?" she asked and watched Horatio start and blink.

He was a little distracted. So perhaps her timing was not the best. There had been a spelling error in his gazette letter. She had noticed it and had decided not to say anything to him -- the damage had, after all, been done. But she was fairly certain he had seen it, too, and was now considering the possibility that it was the first in a cascading chain of errors that would end ultimately in the fiery destruction of his career.

Well, perhaps it was a good time to call his attention to something other than his spelling of the word "affected."

"Horry," Maria said, "could you tell me about the Nautical Almanac?"

Tagging: @notasapleasure @the-golden-vanity @stripedroseandsketchpads and anyone else who would like to!

[redlipstickresurrected]

Ilda von Ernst-Lange (Austrian, 1873-1936, b. Austria) - Katze am Fenster (Cat at the Window), 1921, Paintings: Oil on Cardboard

[the-irreverend]

And stay safe everyone!

[diamondringsandgutterbones]

havent seen a (positive) post specifically about demisexuality + demiromanticism in what feels like forever so happy pride all of my fellow demi people i think we are really cool and awesome

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

[cuunos]

hey can everyone do me a favor and put in the tags why they chose their name? even if you don't go by a chosen name irl, you can put why you chose your online name.

[kitkatpancakestack]

WE HAVE GOT TO START LOVING THE PROCESS MORE THAN THE PRODUCT AGAIN

[commanderchrist-deactivated2017]

Fuck small talk.  Let’s talk about how your day was, the weather, or the big game last night.

[librarianladyx]

Happy Moon Joy June! I made this for a friend’s birthday, based on Capital Stitch Club’s (on Patreon) pattern! 🌕💕

[amphibious-thing]

PSA for Pride Month

It’s “the Chevalière d’Eon” or “la Chevalière d’Eon” not “le Chevalier d’Eon”. Both “la” and “Chevalière” are feminine “le” and “Chevalier” are masculine. Her full name was Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont. Her preferred given name was Geneviève.

It’s great to see people wanting to share her story but let’s try not to misgender or deadname her.

[die-rosastrasse]

Can we bring back 18th century hairstyles?

Rococo Era paintings by Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun, François Boucher, Jakob Björck, Antoine-Jean Gros and François-Hubert Drouais.

[iridessence]

Yes bring it back!!! and yes, it can include styles on Afro textured hair!!