Da Hufflepuff

This shit depressing 🙈😔 she/her

[apod]

2021 April 7

Threads of NGC 1947 Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

Explanation: Found in far southern skies, deep within the boundaries of the constellation Dorado, NGC 1947 is some 40 million light-years away. In silhouette against starlight, obscuring lanes of cosmic dust thread across the peculiar galaxy’s bright central regions. Unlike the rotation of stars, gas, and dust tracing the arms of spiral galaxies, the motions of dust and gas don’t follow the motions of stars in NGC 1947 though. Their more complicated disconnected motion suggest this galaxy’s visible threads of dust and gas may have come from a donor galaxy, accreted by NGC 1947 during the last 3 billion years or so of the peculiar galaxy’s evolution. With spiky foreground Milky Way stars and even more distant background galaxies scattered through the frame, this sharp Hubble image spans about 25,000 light-years near the center of NGC 1947.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210407.html

[daenerysbeauty]

the one line from the lotr films that really gets me is faramir’s ‘the shire must truly be a great realm, master gamgee, where gardeners are held in high honor’. not soldiers, not kings, not wizards. gardeners. because a country where gardeners are beloved is a country without war, with peace, and that is what the series repeatedly shows we are meant to aspire to.

[graves-makar]

[savoies]

[comphyjost]

the avs after the home season opener loss:

so the avs tonight:

[veeaziel]

every day i am percieved™️

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail.

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Total Solar Eclipse 2020

Image Credit: Miloslav Druckmuller, Andreas Moller, (Brno University of Technology)

[apod]

2021 January 5

The Small Cloud of Magellan Image Credit & Copyright: José Mtanous

Explanation: What is the Small Magellanic Cloud? It has turned out to be a galaxy. People who have wondered about this little fuzzy patch in the southern sky included Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew, who had plenty of time to study the unfamiliar night sky of the south during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth in the early 1500s. As a result, two celestial wonders easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers are now known in Western culture as the Clouds of Magellan. Within the past 100 years, research has shown that these cosmic clouds are dwarf irregular galaxies, satellites of our larger spiral Milky Way Galaxy. The Small Magellanic Cloud actually spans 15,000 light-years or so and contains several hundred million stars. About 210,000 light-years away in the constellation of the Tucan (Tucana), it is more distant than other known Milky Way satellite galaxies, including the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud. This sharp image also includes the foreground globular star cluster 47 Tucanae on the right.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210105.html

[astrophysics-daily]

I am observing this galaxy next week to find new pulsars in it :)

[movietonight]

Bingley and Darcy are adhd/autistic solidarity

[ot3]

FUNKO POP???

[americachavez]

“ah surely the kanye jeffree starr alleged hookup is the craziest thing I’ll hear today” I say, a full minute before checking twitter to see armed maskless white supremacists have stormed the capitol building and the senate is barricaded in their chamber

[justagirlwhofellforsupernatural]

just to keep scrolling and see that the police are actually removing barricades for aforementioned maskless white supremacists and holding their hands as they walk down the stairs and taking selfies together

[twocubes]

slept in today, what’d I miss?

[zvaigzdelasas]

go back to bed

[countesssrostova]

some trump supporter interrupted a reporter to yell "at least we're not burning businesses down" and like

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

"at lest we're not threatening capital" lol yes that's exactly how you managed to get that far

[myattemptstobecleverneverwork]

[kittenwiskers]

I HAVE ONE OF THESE!

[just--space]

Stuck on the Rings : Tethys appears to be stuck to Saturn’s A and F rings from this perspective. (via NASA)

[li4r]

Hi i am Deficient in so many minerals and im about to do something ill regret

[startswithabang]

No, The Universe Is Not Purely Mathematical In Nature

“In some ways, it’s a lesson that every physics student learns the first time they calculate the trajectory of an object thrown into the air. How far does it go? Where does it land? How long does it spend in the air? When you solve the mathematical equations — Newton’s equations of motion — that govern these objects, you don’t get “the answer.” You get two answers; that’s what the mathematics gives you.

But in reality, there’s only one object. It only follows one trajectory, landing in one location at one specific time. Which answer corresponds to reality? Mathematics won’t tell you. For that, you need to understand the particulars of the physics problem in question, as only that will tell you which answer has a physical meaning behind it. Mathematics will get you very far in this world, but it won’t get you everything. Without a confrontation with reality, you cannot hope to understand the physical Universe.”

Mathematics is the most powerful tool we’ve ever developed to physically describe the Universe. But mathematics alone won’t get you very far: not unless you confront the results of your calculations with results you can only get by measuring and observing the Universe. Purely mathematical approaches have never succeeded: not for planetary motion, not for the laws of gravity, not for the quantum Universe.

Mathematics is indispensable to making quantitative predictions, but cannot fully describe the Universe on its own. For that, you need physics. Here’s why.