Hello! Welcome to my own little piece of chaos. Proud fanfiction author, she/her, jack of many trades, and good human (or at least, I try to be). Protect trans kids.
āVery bright was the sword of Narsil when it was made whole again; the light of the sun shone redly in it, and the light of the moon shone cold. And so Aragorn gave it a new name and called it AndĆŗril, Flame of the West.ā
Finished this cross stitch and it is definitely my favourite of all the ones Iāve ever made. The pattern I purchased online from the wonderful Helena, a Ukrainian pattern designer (link leads to their shop). Featuring part of the Riddle of Strider and (what I believe are) mallos flowers.
---Ā
Image description: the first image is of a cross stitch done on black cloth. Centered in the middle is Narsil, the sword that was broken from Lord of the Rings. On either side of it are two golden/orange flowers with green leaves and the quote āRenewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be kingā rendered in orange. The second image is a close-up of the cross stitch showing the detail of the flowers and leaves.
oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? itās okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacherās back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didnāt. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i donāt want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too.Ā
one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.
āThe number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.ā (mikko harvey)
Catch me being a modern-day cyberpirate screaming up alongside you on the 405 in my mad max car with half a bitcoin farm's worth of RAM in the backseat as I hack your Bitchless Towyotaā¢ device and steal the boat you're towing right off the back bumper of the tesla your dad bought you
As i roar into the sunset you have to swerve* to avoid the small flotilla of hacked Towyota devices trailing behind me
(*in fact you do not swerve because you're on hands-free driving to go along with your hitch-free towing so you can only watch helplessly as your tesla mistakes your stolen booty for a small child and accelerates crashing into it and killing you instantly)
This illustration shows the relative scale of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Roman is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long ā about the length of a T. rex ā and over 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide when fully deployed. Roman also weighs around 18,000 pounds, or 8,000 kilograms (dry mass), which is the approximate mass of a T. rex as well.
Did you know NASAās Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is both roughly as long and as massive as a Tyrannosaurus rex? This observatory, which will move to the launch site at NASAās Kennedy Space Center in Florida very soon, is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms), not including the fuel. Letās explore some of the components that bring Roman to T. rex proportions.
Artist's concepts of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (left) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (right), highlighting the 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirrors that sit in the heart of each observatory.
At the observatoryās heart sits a mirror thatās 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) across and 410 pounds (186 kilograms), or about the length and weight of a protoceratops! Romanās primary mirror is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescopeās main mirror, but less than one-fourth the weight thanks to major improvements in technology.
Technicians installed Romanās primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument (pictured at left), in the fall of 2025.
The missionās 300-megapixel infrared camera, called the Wide Field Instrument, is over 8 feet (about 2.5 meters) tall, which is about the length of a triceratops skull. It will give Roman the same angular resolution as Hubble while capturing an area of sky at least 100 times larger. The mission will gather data up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble.
Its sweeping cosmic surveys will help scientists discover new information about planets beyond our solar system, untangle mysteries like dark energy, and map how both normal matter and dark matter are structured and distributed throughout the universe. Casting such a wide, deep ānetā into space will give astronomers plenty of cosmic bycatch as well; Romanās crisp, panoramic views will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to do all kinds of exciting science.
The Coronagraph Instrument was installed on Romanās instrument carrier in October 2024.
Romanās Coronagraph Instrument is about as wide (5.5 feet, or 1.7 meters) as a velociraptor is long. The Coronagraph is designed to demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from a star and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them.
The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
This photo shows Romanās 18 detectors, which are the heart of the missionās 300-megapixel camera.
Romanās āeyes,ā 18 saltine cracker-sized detectors in its primary instrument, are each about as tall as an allosaurus tooth. They each have about 16.8 million tiny pixels for a total of 300 million, which means Romanās images will be super hi-res. Each detector is made of millions of mercury-cadmium-telluride photodiodes (sensors that convert light into an electrical current), one for each pixel.
Principal technician Billy Keim installs a cover plate over Romanās detectors.
The detectors are secured to a silicon electronics board that will help process the light signals using indium, a soft metal that has roughly the same consistency as chewing gum. Together, these ultra-sensitive detectors can capture vast areas of sky in a single shot while still revealing incredibly fine detail, allowing Roman to map the cosmos faster and more precisely than ever before.
Romanās electrical wiring was installed on the spacecraft flight structure in the summer of 2023.
There are 1,000 pounds, or 450 kilograms, (the weight of a pachycephalosaurus) of electrical cabling, made up of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors, laced throughout the observatory. If the wires were laid out end-to-end they would span 45 miles ā nearly enough to trace the entire perimeter fence in the imagined Jurassic Park! Functioning as the Romanās ānervous system,ā the cabling enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one another, provides power, and helps the central computer monitor the observatoryās function.
The Roman observatory was fully integrated on Nov. 25, 2025, at NASAās Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Romanās six solar panels each measure about 7 by 10 feet (2 by 3 meters), collectively giving Roman a āwingspanā similar to a pteranodonās! Together, they will provide a total of 4 kilowatts of power, which is about the same rate that a modest rooftop solar panel system produces during the daytime.
Over the course of two days in June 2025, eight technicians installed Romanās solar panels onto the outer portion of the observatory.
The panels are covered in a total of 3,902 solar cells that will convert sunlight directly into electricity much like plants convert sunlight to chemical energy. When tiny bits of light, called photons, strike the cells, some of their energy transfers to electrons within the material. This jolt excites the electrons, which start moving more or jump to higher energy levels. In a solar cell, excited electrons create electricity by breaking free and moving through a circuit, sort of like water flowing through a pipe. The panels are designed to channel that energy to power the observatory.
Romanās high-gain antenna will provide the primary communication link between the spacecraft and the ground.
The radio dish that will send data across a million miles of intervening space back to Earth spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter. Thatās about the size of the largest known dinosaur footprints, yet it weighs only 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms). Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth. The dual-band antenna will use one frequency band to receive commands and send back information about the spacecraftās health and location. It will use another frequency band to transmit a deluge of data at up to 500 megabits per second.
Weāre only a few months out from launch, and so close to a completely new understanding of the universe and our place within it. Follow along with Romanās road to launch at nasa.gov/roman, and virtually tour the Roman observatory here.
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given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
itās been said before and itās not even close to the worst thing but it sucks how our current robber barons are such philistines. like these guys arenāt even building libraries or concert halls. they canāt even pretend to enjoy art, and they donāt see any value in signaling that they appreciate art
this current batch of the fithy-rich is BORING. They're BORING. Oh you have a yacht that's bigger than anybody else's yacht but functionally no different from one of your fancy houses? BORING. You have yet another fast car? YAWN. You ate a burger but like, a special burger? whatever. FUND AN OPERA ABOUT ANOTHER RICH GUY YOU HATE, DIPSHITS. How about you put a concert hall with your name on it in every city in the US and fund their operations for the next decade, if you're so rich????? unless you're too poor to afford that????? How many people do you, personally, directly employ, and what are their salaries? Do you pay well enough to command the loyalty and willing service of any masters of their craft? It would be so easy to win the absolute love and adoration of the masses in this climate but no, they wanna build bunkers and play politics in order to save a few more miserable nickles.
