🌸 Silas/Ray 🌸 25 🌸 they/them/elle 🌸 neurodivergent, disabled, queer & nonbinary 🌸 twitter sucks ass so I'm here 🌸 special interests: spaceman bands, TTRPGs, dinos 🌸 sometimes I do art?? idk. icon & header both by me 🌸 my twitter/insta: sindarinsmoke 🌸 my cat's insta: misschicken.thecat 🌸
ADHD pro tip: Use psychological warfare on yourself.
For example, in order to do long tasks, like folding laundry, I put on the Mario Hat:
The main feature of the Mario hat is that my headset does not fit over it, so when The Bees™ try to put me back in front of the screen, the headset issue forces me to remember why I put the Mario hat on, and back to the task I go
As a bonus, the Mario hat is also a very clear indicator to my housemates that business is getting done, and they have learned not to distract me when I'm wearing the "goofy-ass cosplay hat"
Astronomers used three of NASA's Great Observatories to capture this multiwavelength image showing galaxy cluster IDCS J1426.5+3508. It includes X-rays recorded by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, visible light observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in green, and infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope in red. This rare galaxy cluster has important implications for understanding how these megastructures formed and evolved early in the universe.
How Astronomers Time Travel
Let’s add another item to your travel bucket list: the early universe! You don’t need the type of time machine you see in sci-fi movies, and you don’t have to worry about getting trapped in the past. You don’t even need to leave the comfort of your home! All you need is a powerful space-based telescope.
But let’s start small and work our way up to the farthest reaches of space. We’ll explain how it all works along the way.
This animation illustrates how fast light travels between Earth and the Moon. The farther light has to travel, the more noticeable its speed limit becomes.
The speed of light is superfast, but it isn’t infinite. It travels at about 186,000 miles (300 million meters) per second. That means that it takes time for the light from any object to reach our eyes. The farther it is, the more time it takes.
You can see nearby things basically in real time because the light travel time isn’t long enough to make a difference. Even if an object is 100 miles (161 kilometers) away, it takes just 0.0005 seconds for light to travel that far. But on astronomical scales, the effects become noticeable.
This infographic shows how long it takes light to travel to different planets in our solar system.
Within our solar system, light’s speed limit means it can take a while to communicate back and forth between spacecraft and ground stations on Earth. We see the Moon, Sun, and planets as they were slightly in the past, but it's not usually far enough back to be scientifically interesting.
As we peer farther out into our galaxy, we use light-years to talk about distances. Smaller units like miles or kilometers would be too overwhelming and we’d lose a sense of their meaning. One light-year – the distance light travels in a year – is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). And that’s just a tiny baby step into the cosmos.
The Sun’s closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away. That means we see it as it was about four years ago. Betelgeuse, a more distant (and more volatile) stellar neighbor, is around 700 light-years away. Because of light’s lag time, astronomers don’t know for sure whether this supergiant star is still there! It may have already blasted itself apart in a supernova explosion – but it probably has another 10,000 years or more to go.
What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth.
The Carina Nebula clocks in at 7,500 light-years away, which means the light we receive from it today began its journey about 3,000 years before the pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built! Many new stars there have undoubtedly been born by now, but their light may not reach Earth for thousands of years.
An artist’s concept of our Milky Way galaxy, with rough locations for the Sun and Carina nebula marked.
If we zoom way out, you can see that 7,500 light-years away is still pretty much within our neighborhood. Let’s look further back in time…
This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643. Looking this good isn’t easy; 30 different exposures, for a total of nine hours of observation time, together with Hubble’s high resolution and clarity, were needed to produce an image of such exquisite detail and beauty.
Peering outside our Milky Way galaxy transports us much further into the past. The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor, is about 2.5 million light-years away. And that’s still pretty close, as far as the universe goes. The image above shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is about 60 million light-years away! That means we see it as it was about 60 million years ago.
As telescopes look deeper into the universe, they capture snapshots in time from different cosmic eras. Astronomers can stitch those snapshots together to unravel things like galaxy evolution. The closest ones are more mature; we see them nearly as they truly are in the present day because their light doesn’t have to travel as far to reach us. We can’t rewind those galaxies (or our own), but we can get clues about how they likely developed. Looking at galaxies that are farther and farther away means seeing these star cities in ever earlier stages of development.
The farthest galaxies we can see are both old and young. They’re billions of years old now, and the light we receive from them is ancient since it took so long to traverse the cosmos. But since their light was emitted when the galaxies were young, it gives us a view of their infancy.
This animation is an artist’s concept of the big bang, with representations of the early universe and its expansion.
Comparing how fast objects at different distances are moving away opened up the biggest mystery in modern astronomy: cosmic acceleration. The universe was already expanding as a result of the big bang, but astronomers expected it to slow down over time. Instead, it’s speeding up!
The universe’s expansion makes it tricky to talk about the distances of the farthest objects. We often use lookback time, which is the amount of time it took for an object’s light to reach us. That’s simpler than using a literal distance, because an object that was 10 billion light-years away when it emitted the light we received from it would actually be more than 16 billion light-years away right now, due to the expansion of space. We can even see objects that are presently over 30 billion light-years from Earth, even though the universe is only about 14 billion years old.
This James Webb Space Telescope image shines with the light from galaxies that are more than 13.4 billion years old, dating back to less than 400 million years after the big bang.
Our James Webb Space Telescope has helped us time travel back more than 13.4 billion years, to when the universe was less than 400 million years old. When our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in a few years, astronomers will pair its vast view of space with Webb’s zooming capabilities to study the early universe in better ways than ever before. And don’t worry – these telescopes will make plenty of pit stops along the way at other exciting cosmic destinations across space and time.
Learn more about the exciting science Roman will investigate on X and Facebook.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
i learned that in August 2014 Women’s Voices for the Earth commissioned testing of four types of Always menstrual pads, manufactured by Procter & Gamble. The certified laboratory STAT Analysis Corporation analyzed the products for volatile organic compound.
“The results of the testing indicate that both scented and unscented Always pads emit toxic chemicals, including chemicals identified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the State of California Environmental Protection Agency as carcinogens, and reproductive and developmental toxins. None of these chemicals are disclosed on the product by the manufacturer.” (x)
I switched to dye free fancy cotton pads, after years of having periods so fucking bad I would sometimes faint, and now i just get like. regular cramps occasionally, they’re not even that bad anymore.
i switched back to these after using fancy organic cotton pads during my most recent period & they caused PROBLEMS out of the blue - 100% confirmed, these are not good to use
been using these reusable menstrual pads since november 2019 and im never going back to these commercial pads. commercial pads like these always gives me skin rashes which is so annoying. switch to reusable i swear you’ll not only be period-ready but also rashes-free!
psa they also have a starter pack in case you want to switch and you dont know what to get and an xl size for plus sized women!
Plus, there’s a study that showed that vagina are highly vascular so, basically, every chemical you put down there is absorbed by your body real fast and really well. In short, ditch tampon too.
Yeah, reusable pads were one of my first major eco-friendly changes but my body has been way happier that way. They are infinitely more comfortable and effective, and I just throw them in my washing machine on the hand wash + extra rinse and hang dry. I can’t say being on your period is ever pleasant, but it’s way better than before - ESPECIALLY in situations where you can’t change as often - and I don’t feel like the harbinger of the end of the world when I look at my restroom trash can anymore :)
I always buy generic brands but wasnt “always” the ones who were sending fucked up pads to women in africa just a few years ago too???? Fuck always brand.
they now have a budget-friendly trial pack so you no longer have to worry which pad fits best for you. you can just buy the pack to get one pad of each size!!
Cariona pads (link above) are AWESOME. Don’t knock it til you try it - I’ll never go back to always pads. My period is, like, manageable, for the first time in my life. It is no longer a struggle with excruciating cramps, heavy bleeding, leakage, and looooong periods, but like, mild to medium cramps, and I HAVE A CYCLE AGAIN for the first time in years. Try it. The upfront cost is daunting, I understand, because I was worried I wouldn’t like them, but I’m SO GLAD I got them. Just toss them in bottom of your shower when you take them off, shower as usual, and then squeeze them out. That basically rinses them for you, and then they’re all set for the washer and dryer. You’ll thank yourself later; give it a try.
Cariona pads are amazing and they are SO cute. Like @maybeitsfinallytime was saying, they’re really easy to rinse out, and I usually hang them over my shower rod to dry so I can reuse them during the cycle, then give them a proper wash in hot water with a little sanitizing detergent afterwards.
Here’s to trying some. I even bought the animal crossing variety! Maybe I’ll never worry about running out of pads again? Who knows? I’ll update when I’ve tried them.
UPDATE: I just ordered the trial pack. I personally have a lot of problems with excruciating cramps my cycle being consistent, especially in recent months after losing weight and medications and such. Hopefully these work well/help because I always feel guilty about the amount of waste normal pads create
Due to when the reusable pads I ordered arrived I ended up switching literally in the middle of my last period and the difference was instant, I’ve gotten really bad cramps for as long as I can remember and still did the first half this time around but I didn’t cramp at all wearing the reusable pads. I highly recommend the switch.
I bought the cariona pads too and oh my gosh. The difference. I went from painful cramps and headaches to just mild cramps for like a day. They are so easy to use and so comfortable.
Been saying this for years and people thought I was crazy, it definitely affects us women and we should have a say in how these things are manufactured.
hi these are the reusable pads i use and while they do slide around a little bit, i haven’t once gotten throbbing sensitive skin around my vulva or shooting pains down my legs since using them. i used to think that was a part of having my period but now i’m convinced it was from the pads and tampons i was using. not to mention i save tons of money on disposables.
I’m definately going to try and save up for some of the reusable pads. My cramps have been terrible all my life and all I’ve ever used is always pads so that could very well be the reason for my bad cramps :/
I’ve been on reusable pads since I had my child four years ago and they have been a game-changer! No more rashes or irritation, no more sweaty grossness, way fewer UTIs, no “it’s stuck to my pubic hair again” moments… My girl down there can just breathe and do her thing. 1000% recommended.
I’ve had cramps so painful I’ve been unable to go to work or school all because people can’t make pads without adding chemicals. I’m buying reusable ones once my paycheck is in.
Been using these Cariona reusable pads for about two years now and even if it’s an expensive start-up cost, it’s worth it. No more spending money on pads and tampons at the store, no more cramping, smell or rash/irritation, they’re easy to take care of and the designs are awesome! So much more comfortable and healthier. I genuinely cannot rec these enough, PLEASE at least give these a chance.
I just ordered some and I must say, their customer service is STELLAR! I’ve never had such a pleasant and helpful experience as I did with them. They even let me choose the patterns of things that normally would have been random. Amazing! I’m definitely trying them out and giving a review of how they work for me.
so this European clothing retailer decided to advertise their jean cuts on youtube and it's unintentionally the funniest shit I've seen today. why? well.
now important context here: in German, die (pronounced 'dee') is just a feminine article, it literally means "the".
but if an ad gets placed in the middle of an English video and doesn't use a single explicitly German word for most of the ad, even a native speaker is gonna think "they want me to die how?" it keeps getting funnier.
A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways.
The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.
AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond.
Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows.
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
areudirty
kaledo-art
ellievsbear
