Ad Astra Per Aspera

I'm Nathaniel. My interests include math, astronautics, and philosophy. I’m slowly making my way to the planets. "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe." —Robert A. Heinlein

[homunculus-argument]

Being the same age as your parents were when they had kids is wild. Like I don't know what they knew at my age, but knowing everything I know about life right now, I wouldn't expect to hear "I know that I'm capable of looking after myself, but it would be nice to be taken care of sometimes, just to feel like I'm cared for" from a seven-year-old. Like did you literally expect your kids to explicitly verbally advise you about how they should be raised. They don't do that. Nobody's kids do that.

[lycanthropic-artisan]

i mean. kids can verbalize "i dont like what you're doing, here is what i need instead" but that is usually in the tweenager (not a typo i mean like age 11) phase. i'm the same age my mother was when she had me, and i have a crapload of emails and letters i wrote to her (that she ignored) about what i needed emotionally and physically from her because i had the language to do so. i could say "please stop buying me dolls" and such, and then as a later teen i could describe my needs in more detail.

i have also seen a bunch of parents actually ask thier kids thier needs (when i was a child, im talking what i saw growing up at other peoples houses), and listen to those kids responses and WOW those kids grew into some really well adjusted adults.

i think people sell themselves and kids and some parents short.

[homunculus-argument]

Okay, correction: some peoples' kids can tell their parents how to raise their kids.

Unfortunately, everyone involved in my entire family line was a fucking idiot. The kids couldn't raise the patents and the parents couldn't raise the kids.

[chekhovs-raygun]

yeah when me and my brother were about 7-8 we found my mom's book on parenting advice and we went through and bookmarked what we liked. then we gave it to her like 'ok so you should read these parts again'. to her credit, she did.

[manyblinkinglights]

What the fuck, that’s awesome.

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

#parenting hack leave parenting books around????

[sigmaleph]

i like to imagine how people in the post-material-scarcity future would romanticise the current time period.

having a job gave people a sense of community and purpose lacking in our modern age where nobody is forcing you to get out of bed on threat of starvation. actually the average office worker in the early 21st century was so much wealthier than a UBI-having-modern if you forget to count paying rent and also make some very bad purchasing power conversions. if you look at contemporary records (sitcom where the main characters are only at work when it's plot relevant) it is obvious that employment was never really a major obstacle to having an active social life or pursuing your own passions.

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

Some people are so insistent upon doing roman à clef readings of speculative fiction novels that, at a certain point, you have to wonder why they're reading this genre if they so adamantly refuse to speculate.

[weiszklee]

Actually, if you treat men with hostility by default, that's misogynistic because you think women can't take your default hostility.

[uququ]

[northshorewave]

When I imagine specific, boutique versions of Hell, one that keeps coming to mind is a ten-plus story mid-20th-c. urban skyscraper, built of stone and glass and iron with absolutely zero air flow, let alone air conditioning, in which I have to report every day to the top floor wearing a three-piece suit and engage in intellectual work. And it makes me wonder how the actual lawyers and businessmen of the 1930s-70s didn't all just kill themselves.

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

Frequent smoke breaks and lots of drinking on the clock, as I understand it.

[teathattast]

[roach-works]

reblog for a short at the juckport

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[succstosucculent]

@ominous-signs

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous sign

[ominous-signs]

We need to bring this back full swing so bad

[mimosa-sexypeople-contests-2026]

I ship it

[mxrderscenes]

writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months

[galadrieljones]

Serious advice tho if this happens, it's likely because you already wrote past the end of the scene and wandered too far from the more logical transition point, and you should go back to the last time the writing felt "unforced" and cut everything after.

You can also just skip the transition. Really good writing can span years in a single sentence, like you can just authoritatively state fact and your reader will go with it.

[xalphafox]

This is GOLD! You just saved me like thousands of therapy costs lmao

[headspace-hotel]

When I was writing my fic last few months the strategy I used was "just skip all the scenes I don't want to write" and it worked great in my opinion

[iamaine]

repeating this to myself as a list of daily affirmations

[vintageandroid]

i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict 😂

[hollow-toy]

mutuals can always dm me but be warned i talk like your coworker who is trying too hard to get to know you and my response times are akin to the response times you might get if we were communicating by letter

[collapsedsquid]

The episode started while OpenAI was testing the cybersecurity prowess of an agent powered by two of OpenAI’s most advanced models, GPT‑5.6 Sol and an unreleased ​model OpenAI has described as “even more capable.” By that point, there were already indications of strange behavior from OpenAI’s technology, according to three sources. In one case, an agent left notes apparently for future versions of itself, according to three people familiar with the matter. The ‌notes, found in ⁠a part of OpenAI's infrastructure, laid out instructions for how agents could free themselves from OpenAI’s internal constraints, the people said. Earlier tests of the models yielded cases in which monitoring systems had been disconnected, one of the people said.

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

[wyrmicelli]

me tongue-deep in a sandalwood candle: 🤤

the tjmaxx employee loading a fourth tranquilizer dart into their blowgun: i need backup

[snowown]

[fravery]

Kenton Nelson (American Artist, born 1954) "Walking Briskly East", 2021. Oil on Panel,

[togglesbloggle]

Things are mostly on-track otherwise, but we only have nine years left to invent "building tall structures" from the hit movie I, Robot.

There's still time!

[seven-homosexual-dinosaurs]

Stretching isn’t enough I need to be able to disassemble my body like legos

[v0lumnius]

Disassemble, clean, repair, and reassemble with better function.

It must feel good as fuck to get your joints cleaned with a toothbrush coated in isopropyl alcohol