if our demons cannot dance, neither can we

- Nikita Gill

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[spinningprincess]

What if we were allowed to strive for "enough"

For background, I'm a shop owner. I own a small brick and mortar (ok, plywood and LVL and weird fake brick, but whatever) yarn store in a suburban town. 

I keep getting emails from review sites, my point of sale system, random cold calls: "increase your sales!" "advertise in more markets!" "unchecked growth!" "people always need more!"

Okay, those last two were paraphrases, but the first two aren't.

And like. We're a small shop. I have a relatively large staff and it's still under ten people. Only two or three of us can actually get a package in the mail. Mostly we have to have a whole conversation with a customer who comes in. I don't want unchecked growth, I don't even want a ton of checked growth. I want steady sales with a stable number of regular customers who buy yarn when they have a new project, and a medium number (maybe 25%?) of new customers who are themselves a mix of people who will become regulars and one-off tourists who will think of us fondly when they go back home. I want a medium number of online sales, again a mix of regulars who know and like us (maybe some of those tourists!) and people who are frantically looking for one last skein to finish a project. 

Unchecked growth is BAD. It's unsustainable for us, the humans who actually package and sell the yarn, and it's unsustainable for the customers, who will soon be drowning in yarn that they don't have time to work with because they're too busy buying yarn, and it's unsustainable for the YARN MARKET since there are people who have a finite number of people hours each. Slow, small, steady growth that doesn't balloon out and create a problem for us later is my ideal.

I do understand that the many many MANY people who are trying to sell me advertising don't really care about this, they have been told that their job needs unchecked growth and that they need to keep making their sales numbers increase, despite the fact that that's wildly unsustainable for them, but.

Guys.

What if there was enough. Not too much, not too little, but enough. What would the world look like if we strove for "enough" rather than "more all the time"? Wouldn't that be nice?

I know that Tumblr doesn't think this is weird and radical, but maybe MAYBE one of the people who's got a horrible sales job at an unnamed review site will happen across this post and think "hmm, maybe it's not me, maybe she just really doesn't want any advertising."

I live in hope, I guess. Hope and a constant state of "no thank you we've got plenty."

This post brought to you by my point of sale system trying to get me to advertise in more markets.

[kingcatnine]

we need to instill a new storytelling rule of thumb into people called "show don't tweet" where we encourage them to put all pertinent canon information into the actual story and its official supplemental material instead of using reddit AMAs as lore dlcs

[afreemanlearns]

[starplanes]

I finished writing Sidequesting Seson Four! I need some voices! Come audition! All roles are paid!

Sidequesting S4 Casting Call

Sidequesting Season Four Casting Call (slight spoilers ahead!) Title: Sidequesting Project Type: Audio Drama Union/Non-Union: Non-Union L

[thirdity]

“You write the beginning and then you go back and rewrite the beginning, and you never got off page one. It’s kind of a syndrome, and I have a rash piece of advice which is — Go on, page two, page three, and never look back. Get something finished, no matter how lousy it is. […] Perfectionists cannot get going unless they kind of do violence to their own instincts, and just blast ahead.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations

[sparrowlucero]

its kind of distressing how you can tell a lot of people see popular indie artists and writers and such as like "a Celebrity but one which i stand a half decent chance of bullying to death"

[wordcubed]

[captainjonnitkessler]

So many political posts I hate boil down to "I don't want to organize and work with people I hate and fight for small, incremental victories, I just want to start a revolution where everyone magically becomes an automaton who acts exactly the way I think they should act"

Like damn man, I want that too. Unfortunately I live in reality though so we're stuck with the first thing.

[captainjonnitkessler]

"Modern movements are too fractured, too aimless, with too much infighting and corruption among the leadership. What we need is a revolution, which famously never have any issues with those things" okay then. Good luck I guess

This whole line of thinking comes down to "the current systems and leadership are bad. What we need is a fresh start with only people who are good, and then all the systems will be good". Which is simply not how anything has ever worked!

[traycakes]

"We don't have enough people, funding, and power to bring about changes through elections! We have to do an armed revolution instead which thankfully doesn't require people, funding, or power to pull off."

[bloodraven55]

once you recognise the ubiquitous and inevitable fandom life cycle it becomes much easier to free yourself from it and just keep enjoying things in a more healthy way while still thinking critically about them

[thefandomlifechoseme]

so like. when are we getting that wild west ect TV show where right at the end of the first season. right at the end. last ten minutes right at the end. the main character wanders over from America to England to go propose to this really nice girl we've been hearing about all season. and she opens the door and we finally learn the main character's last name.

and The Public still don't even realise that Quincey Morris just wandered his way into the plot of Dracula because no one ever includes him in the adaptations and no one's actually read the book

when are we getting that.

[yraelviii]

Here. For. This.

[drchucktingle]

when i think about artists ruining their own name and falling for ai i am reminded of one of my favorite lyrics. it is from the bright eyes song 'road to joy'. 'i could have been a famous singer if i had someone elses voice, but failures always sounded better, lets fuck it up boys make some noise'

[irithiadourden]

I'll hold your hand while I say this, but... characters in a book aren't real people, and they aren't bound by the moral codes of real people.

[motherfuckingshakespeare]

A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE. 

[enki2]

[samirasystole]

random but here is a recipe for cold peanut noodles that you can make during hot weather because i just ate this and had a fantastic time

2tbsp of peanut butter. a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. some chili flakes, some sesame seeds. a splash of water to thin it out. now you put in your noodles (cooled!!!! boiled and rinsed so they’re cold!!) and then some chopped up cucumber or carrot or avocado or cabbage or any crunchy vegetable. i just used cucumber

you can also put in lime juice or herbs or sriracha or grated garlic/ginger or anything like that; tofu/tempe/meat for more protein etc. noodle wise this can be ramen soba udon whatever, i used soba. enjoy homies

[anonajn]

relentlessly funny to me when people treat a relationship between someone in their 30s and someone in their 40s as "age difference". bro i cannot tell you which of my friends are 34 and which are 44. i can probably tell you which ones aren't 30 yet, but it's probable some of them are 50 now and i didn't notice. if you're over 30 and don't have kids, it's kinda all one age until you can collect social security.

[succubusboyfriend]

practicing self care less out of self love and more for the sheer logical reasoning of it’d be kinda stupid of me to expect myself to be able to function without proper maintenance

[succubusboyfriend]

“oh i don’t deserve rest and relaxation, i haven’t done enough, i haven’t earned it” and my car’s breaks don’t deserve break fluid because they aren’t breaking well enough to earn it. that’s what you sound like!!!!!

[reasonsforhope]

If you do not schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you

[pnwnativeplants]