Max's Tumblr blog

Hi! I'm Max, a 3D animator & artist for video games! I use Tumblr to share things that caught my eye, that I find interesting, or made me laugh. This should go without saying, but: opinions are not always mine, reblogs and likes do not imply endorsement. This blog has a long queue of posts. Every day at midnight CET/CEST, two get automatically posted.

[sayahbayahboo]

One pool floatie to rule them all

[lady-merian]

in case anyone besides me wanted to see it in use :)

[nohoperadio]

Vinyl records are circular because it's an efficient use of space: the grooves that encode the music are laid out in a spiral on the disc, so that the needle only has to move as far as the disc's radius to read the entire thing. Before this clever idea was thought of, the grooves were instead laid out in a straight line, and every LP was a narrow rectangle more than a thousand feet long. To flip an album to side b at least two people were needed, one at each end, coordinating via shouted instructions.

[blujayonthewing]

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of Middle English trivia is that in medieval England, illusionism – that is, stage magic based on sleight of hand – was considered to be part of the juggler's art, which eventually caused many words for "magic" to acquire a secondary meaning of "juggling", and vice versa. If you read in an account from the period that someone practised jugglery, that means they were either a juggler or a sorcerer, and sometimes the context does not help!

[thecoolerwinter1234lo]

this fanfiction shit easy af

[cybernoetics]

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[glowcowboy]

“it’s not that deep” it’s not that shallow. now what

[druid-for-hire]

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

[ambrosial-sunshine]

For the painting especially there’s a beauty in depicting some of our most advanced technology as synonymous with the most ancient. Very few people throughout history have had the privilege of seeing the face of Jupiter but many would recognize the sling thrower immediately.

[fandom-trash-goblin]

we've got a life to love living.

[teaboot]

advice that has literally saved and improved my life

[luxwing]

GAMING NEWS !!

expensive

[luxwing]

[crackedpolishedblackstonebrick]

posts funnier with timestamps on

[thespoonisvictory]

Ursula K. Le Guin has truly, truly never missed even once

[hooved]

FUCK it was in parallel australia

[multibugorganism]

[angel-advise]

what the fuck

[contemptible-scoundrel]

nosh time...!

[fipindustries]

if i ever become a showrunner i will actually do the fake series finalle followed by the true ending where the popular gay ship is confirmed just so i can forever poison fandom with the idea that it can happen for real and then they will truly never let that hope go for all other subsequent shows they watch henceforth. just for the sake of making the world a worse place

[dogpuppy]

[mono-red-menace]

[sceptixfakemon]

taste my steel you stupid citrus