this is, like, an active process that is happening right now, games are as we speak being delisted, shadowbanned, or removed from people's library. the nsfw tag is no longer searchable; nsfw games only appear if you search for their exact title.
when the steam ban came down last week everyone said 'well, we'll lost a bunch of money, but at least there's still itch.' itch.io has been one of the go-to places for people making pornographic or even just lewd video games, comic books, and tabletop rpgs. just like every other platform, the pornographers were an important part of their early user base, on the buyer and seller side.
this is absolutely disastrous, and not just "oh because people can't buy porn anymore" like this is a continued assertion that laws don't actually matter in terms of what you're allowed to buy and what you're allowed to sell; forms of art and individual artists can be declared permissible or impermissible with a broad brush or at a very granular level by the arbitrary, conservative whims of the people who own payment processors. who do you want deciding what you can buy? who do you want telling you whether your game with scantily clad tieflings, your comic with a li'l too much man ass, your ttrpg about young queer people, is sexual in nature? for me the answer is 'literally no one,' but even if you accept that there ought to be laws about this sort of thing, surely you want it to be, like, legislators making the decision, and not 'some random executives, whose motives are unclear, and who are accountable to nobody,' right? right???
it's not going to stop here, mark my words. stand with the sex workers and the pornographers or the next thing VISA and Mastercard are gonna decide you can't buy is fucking pup masks and dildos and pride flags
This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, beyond which no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip. The black hole’s powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as it skims by the black hole.
You might wonder — if this Tumblr post is about invisible things, what’s with all the pictures? Even though we can’t see these things with our eyes or even our telescopes, we can still learn about them by studying how they affect their surroundings. Then, we can use what we know to make visualizations that represent our understanding.
When you think of the invisible, you might first picture something fantastical like a magic Ring or Wonder Woman’s airplane, but invisible things surround us every day. Read on to learn about seven of our favorite invisible things in the universe!
1. Black Holes
This animation illustrates what happens when an unlucky star strays too close to a monster black hole. Gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The trailing part of the stream escapes the system, while the leading part swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. A powerful jet can also form. This cataclysmic phenomenon is called a tidal disruption event.
You know ‘em, and we love ‘em. Black holes are balls of matter packed so tight that their gravity allows nothing — not even light — to escape. Most black holes form when heavy stars collapse under their own weight, crushing their mass to a theoretical singular point of infinite density.
Although they don’t reflect or emit light, we know black holes exist because they influence the environment around them — like tugging on star orbits. Black holes distort space-time, warping the path light travels through, so scientists can also identify black holes by noticing tiny changes in star brightness or position.
2. Dark Matter
A simulation of dark matter forming large-scale structure due to gravity.
What do you call something that doesn’t interact with light, has a gravitational pull, and outnumbers all the visible stuff in the universe by five times? Scientists went with “dark matter,” and they think it's the backbone of our universe’s large-scale structure. We don’t know what dark matter is — we just know it's nothing we already understand.
We know about dark matter because of its gravitational effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters — observations of how they move tell us there must be something there that we can’t see. Like black holes, we can also see light bend as dark matter’s mass warps space-time.
3. Dark Energy
Animation showing a graph of the universe’s expansion over time. While cosmic expansion slowed following the end of inflation, it began picking up the pace around 5 billion years ago. Scientists still aren’t sure why.
No one knows what dark energy is either — just that it’s pushing our universe to expand faster and faster. Some potential theories include an ever-present energy, a defect in the universe’s fabric, or a flaw in our understanding of gravity.
Scientists previously thought that all the universe’s mass would gravitationally attract, slowing its expansion over time. But when they noticed distant galaxies moving away from us faster than expected, researchers knew something was beating gravity on cosmic scales. After further investigation, scientists found traces of dark energy’s influence everywhere — from large-scale structure to the background radiation that permeates the universe.
4. Gravitational Waves
Two black holes orbit each other and generate space-time ripples called gravitational waves in this animation.
Like the ripples in a pond, the most extreme events in the universe — such as black hole mergers — send waves through the fabric of space-time. All moving masses can create gravitational waves, but they are usually so small and weak that we can only detect those caused by massive collisions. Even then they only cause infinitesimal changes in space-time by the time they reach us. Scientists use lasers, like the ground-based LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) to detect this precise change. They also watch pulsar timing, like cosmic clocks, to catch tiny timing differences caused by gravitational waves.
This animation shows gamma rays (magenta), the most energetic form of light, and elusive particles called neutrinos (gray) formed in the jet of an active galaxy far, far away. The emission traveled for about 4 billion years before reaching Earth. On Sept. 22, 2017, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected the arrival of a single high-energy neutrino. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope showed that the source was a black-hole-powered galaxy named TXS 0506+056, which at the time of the detection was producing the strongest gamma-ray activity Fermi had seen from it in a decade of observations.
5. Neutrinos
This animation shows gamma rays (magenta), the most energetic form of light, and elusive particles called neutrinos (gray) formed in the jet of an active galaxy far, far away. The emission traveled for about 4 billion years before reaching Earth. On Sept. 22, 2017, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected the arrival of a single high-energy neutrino. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope showed that the source was a black-hole-powered galaxy named TXS 0506+056, which at the time of the detection was producing the strongest gamma-ray activity Fermi had seen from it in a decade of observations.
Because only gravity and the weak force affect neutrinos, they don’t easily interact with other matter — hundreds of trillions of these tiny, uncharged particles pass through you every second! Neutrinos come from unstable atom decay all around us, from nuclear reactions in the Sun to exploding stars, black holes, and even bananas.
Scientists theoretically predicted neutrinos, but we know they actually exist because, like black holes, they sometimes influence their surroundings. The National Science Foundation’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects when neutrinos interact with other subatomic particles in ice via the weak force.
6. Cosmic Rays
This animation illustrates cosmic ray particles striking Earth's atmosphere and creating showers of particles.
Every day, trillions of cosmic rays pelt Earth’s atmosphere, careening in at nearly light-speed — mostly from outside our solar system. Magnetic fields knock these tiny charged particles around space until we can hardly tell where they came from, but we think high energy events like supernovae can accelerate them. Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from cosmic rays, meaning few actually make it to the ground.
Though we don’t see the cosmic rays that make it to the ground, they tamper with equipment, showing up as radiation or as “bright” dots that come and go between pictures on some digital cameras. Cosmic rays can harm astronauts in space, so there are plenty of precautions to protect and monitor them.
7. (Most) Electromagnetic Radiation
The electromagnetic spectrum is the name we use when we talk about different types of light as a group. The parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, arranged from highest to lowest energy are: gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared light, microwaves, and radio waves. All the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are the same thing — radiation. Radiation is made up of a stream of photons — particles without mass that move in a wave pattern all at the same speed, the speed of light. Each photon contains a certain amount of energy.
The light that we see is a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, which spans many wavelengths. We frequently use different wavelengths of light — from radios to airport security scanners and telescopes.
Visible light makes it possible for many of us to perceive the universe every day, but this range of light is just 0.0035 percent of the entire spectrum. With this in mind, it seems that we live in a universe that’s more invisible than not! NASA missions like NASA's Fermi, James Webb, and Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes will continue to uncloak the cosmos and answer some of science’s most mysterious questions.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
I was offered to rule over Hell, but before I could answer my mom backhand slapped God in the face and said, “I have never been more insulted in my afterlife.”
"We call it vff," said the alien. "It's - it's hard to describe to a species without vffsense. Imagine trying to describe light to a species that never evolved eyes. But there are forms of life that are only perceptible with vffsense, and they've visited Earth and fed on life as long as it's existed here."
There was a pause.
Then the human said, "That's the worst thing you've ever said."
"Don't worry about it."
"I think I have to, now."
"No, because - well - you have a species of spider which pretends to be an ant, correct? It's not capable of understanding the fact that it's mimicking an ant, but it instinctually mimics an ant in order to deter predators."
"Sure?"
"Humans produce a vff to mimic varths, predators only perceptible through vffsense. The organisms that would like to feed on you are terrified of varths, and so they leave you alone. You aren't aware you do it, you don't have the capacity to understand you're doing it, but you evolved to instinctually do it to deter predators you can't see."
There was a pause.
Then the human said in a very soft and thoughtful voice, "And are there varths on Earth?"
"Yes," said the alien. "Everywhere. But don't worry about it."
"Well, varths can also sense vff, of course, but to a varth you putting off varth like vff isn't particularly frightening."
"Not frightening, ok. So do they feed on us?"
"No."
"So if not feeding then something... else?"
"Yes. Quite a lot of something else actually."
"What do you mean a lot of something else?"
"Well, you know ostriches?"
"Yeah?"
"When you humans keep ostriches, sometimes you accidentally exhibit features and behaviors that... appeal to an ostrich more than a member of their own species."
"So you're saying varth find us-"
"Incconsivably sexy, desirable to the point they abandon their own home planet and species with some regularity. It's actually quite fascinating, humans are to varth as cats are to catnip."
"Wow that's a lot to take in... you sure know a lot of animal metaphors. You could be a zoologist."
“You need to find God,” says the man at the door. “No I’m good, thank you,” you say, starting to close the door. “Please!” says the man urgently. “God is missing, please find him!”
amandla
gummygunk
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
origamiaround
areudirty
pixelskylines
gracieabrams
