Dreams from the Radio Cosmos

Scientist, Engineer, Writer, whatever...

[alagaisia]

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

[alagaisia]

It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

[alagaisia]

It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

[watermelon-converse]

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

[emi--rose]

Hell yeah moon holiday

[hello-delicious-tea]

Ooh coming up we should celebrate

[ariaste]

PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)

[sarostheghostcat]

MOON DAY MOON DAY MOON DAY

[wafflebloggies]

moon day is 20th July!!!

[silly-jellyghoty]

Scheduling this a day earlier to remind you all and myself about the Moon Day tomorow!

[kedreeva]

I scheduled this in 2025 to give you all a week to make Moon Day Monday preparations! I think I will order a little rocket cake or bake some moon phase cookies!

[dduane]

It's coming, cousins. ...This could be as big as March 15th if we made it that way...

[oberonsson]

Dame Archer kicks McDougal’s Scots ass there in the rain at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire - August 11, 2018 - Photo by Douglas Herring

[anarcho-wormism-deactivated2019]

😮

[garrettauthor]

Oh NO.

[treacleaergia]

me, a sheltered noblewoman: Pray who is that brave knight? Dame Archer:*turns around* me: gasp! *instantly in love*

[dirtyriver]

Alicia Archer

[ex-sang-uination]

my bi heart………

[ohmightysmiter]

I’VE NEVER SEEN THE ADDED PICS

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

[nyx-belial]

*dies*

[garrettauthor]

Oh shit.

[notlostonanadventure]

GAY KNIGHTS

[unicornofdarknessstuff-deactiva]

Fellas I’m real gay

[thecarrott]

@0hheytherebigbadwolf HELP!!

[0hheytherebigbadwolf]

Every June this inevitably winds up back on my dash. And I appreciate that. And I will reblog it. Every time.

[rockitcat]

Hey, it’s @archerinventive, and the Pride Knights!

[startabby]

Tis the season.

[zero1infinity]

[tsukiyamas]

why does this have 32k notes? it’s just a picture of a knife in a ranch bottle, is there some unspoken joke that 32 thousand people share? what is going on here, i dont get it. it’s just a fucking picture of a knife in a ranch bottle. is there some spiritual connection people have to this picture? is there some ominous and mystical reasoning that this has 32 thousand notes? do people reblog this because it makes them look like some indie blogger? or is there just something funny to this? someone please explain

[diggly]

no one tell him

[fallcaesar]

Santa is on strike due to global warming.  All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger.  Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

“MUST BRING PRESENTS TO GOOD CHILDREN”

“Yes good”

“AND EAT THE BAD ONES”

“Wait no”

“EAT THEM”

“sasha no”

[tolkientrash]

@burstofhope the Christmas tiger is watching

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

She is making a list

It is not easy with her paws but she is making it

[iguanamouth]

shes almost here

[miscriont]

Okay fine this is the ONE Christmas thing I will reblog before Thanksgiving BUT THAT’S IT

[craptaztic]

SASHA’S BACK ON MY DASH!

[mace-from-outerspace]

Y’all better behave, you have two months

[aseriouscomedian]

You better watch out

You better watch out

You better watch out

You better watch out

[ordinaryschmuck]

Don’t forget Sasha ze Christmas Tiger.

She’s coming for you~.

[startabby]

A most joyful time of the year...

[devinellekurtz]

The unexpected reason why the drive-through line is so long

[startabby]

LOL ;-)

[fuckofffanpol]

that's... not how it works. you can't guarantee that your work definitely won't squick anyone. what do you think you're saying?

[the-bar-sinister]

"squick free" someone writes on their wholesome family fic about married characters expecting a baby.

I read it and am extremely squicked.

You do not know what squicks other people. "Squick" is not a category of elements, it is a description of a reaction.

[actualaster]

Squick is literally a personal thing, you literally cannot know what squicks another person.

Same goes for triggers, by the way. You can't guarantee something is trigger-free because literally anything can be a trigger because the human brain can be weird like that sometimes.

[skaars-treasure-trove]

No no, actually there's a perfect way to write an absolutely squick free fanfic! Plenty of writers do it successfully every day!

Here.

[lethalbutterfly]

Blank documents squick me out because they remind me of all my unstarted writing projects. :/

[fuckofffanpol]

[fuckofffanpol]

guys. c'mon.

[fuckofffanpol]

oh my goddd

[salmonandsoup]

Okay, for anyone ACTUALLY unsure and wanting to learn: "squick" is an old fandom term. It means something that grosses you out or makes you deeply uncomfortable, but doesn't give you as intense negative reactions as a trigger. They are incredibly personal, though often times, just like with triggers, you can tag relatively common squicks.

For me, mpreg is a squick. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, but it doesn't send me into a panic spiral, a deep depression, or make me angry like reading about eye trauma does.

[nightingalesighs]

My cousins in Lannister, ‘squick’ didn’t even originate in fandom.

Also useful to note that ‘squick’ is specifically used to mean “this isn’t for me, personally” without adding a moral judgement to it. A simple easy way to say ‘no, thank you but you do you’. Unlike ‘cringe’ which has negative connotations. Squicks are also more than just uncomfortable.

Daddy kink makes me uncomfortable

Degradation squicks me out

Hand trauma is a trigger

[darker-than-darkstorm]

First known usage of "squick" was in 1991. It's not some new term that was made up for this post.

[moniquill]

It's a portmanteau of Squeamish and Ick.

Modern parlance would translate it as "A thing that gives me the ick"

Hope this helps, kids ignorant of and derisive towards fandom history.

[startabby]

I am a big fan of the term, specifically because of the lack of judgment associated with it. Interesting to learn some new things about its origins though...

[bauliya]

i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back

[bauliya]

someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.

[bauliya]

i’m fine

[moonlightredfern]

I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.

Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.

I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:

[laurenthemself]

…oh.

[theconcealedweapon]

[startabby]

Yeah, that sounds about right...

[cookie-sheet-toboggan]

Air Himbo

Water Himbo

Earth Himbo

Fire Himbo

[immaplatypus]

@crvggio​ I’ve been laughing at this for 47 years

[demigoddessqueens]

And the Avatar

[an-eldritch-nightmare-deactivat]

Reblogging again because that last addition is IMPORTANT

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

But when the world needed him most, he pulled the wrong lever...

[lady-byleth]

Why do they even have that lever?

[miss-nerd-alert]

Well done everyone, 10/10 post

[startabby]

a bit of fun.

[boatgrave-deactivated20250901]

[mysteryteacup]

*Scrolls past*

*reluctant sigh*

*scrolls back up*

*rebogs*

[startabby]

you just gotta do it...

[dduane]

Ten years ago now, he left us.

I miss him.

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

[andhumanslovedstories]

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

[seiya234]

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

[stormsbreadth]

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

[adverbian]

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

[triflesandparsnips]

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

[amuseoffyre]

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

[deathsmallcaps]

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

[sarahreesbrennan]

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

[fiollaigean]

guys it's fucking close to water

[aridotdash]

[jennyofmany]

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

[arkytiorlecter]

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

[vaspider]

You know it's a good Discworld pun when I not only say GODDAMMIT but take my glasses off and fling them onto my keyboard. (I just did this with the Vetinari thing.)

[jaesrri]

Granted, this was one that I happened to get first or second pass- though I don't remember if mumma said something to trip it or if it's just because I have familiarity with the source, but one of my *absolute favorites* is in Soul Music. And Terry spent like half the book building it up.

Consider the Meatloaf song, Bat out of Hell.

Consider the album art:

Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rose bed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he'd ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word. The flower bed erupted. Modo had a brief vision of flames and something arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers, and soft black petals. He shook his head, and ambled off to fetch his shovel.

Consider the bike:

"Looks like some kind of... horse or something."

"It's coming straight for the gates!"

The tortured roar bounced off the houses.

"Nobby, I don't think it's gonna stop!"

Corporal Nobbs threw himself flat against the wall. Colon, slightly more aware of the responsibilities of rank, waved his hands vaguely at the approaching light. "Don't do it! Don't do it!" And then picked himself up out of the mud. Rose petals, feathers, and sparks fell softly around him. In front of him, a hole in the gates sparkled blue around the edges. "That's old oak, that is," he said vaguely. "I just hope they don't make us pay for it out of our own money. Did you see who it was, Nobby? Nobby?" Nobby edged carefully along the wall. "He... he had a rose in his teeth, Sarge." "Yes, but would you recognize him if you saw him again?"

And

Things were coming apart. The Librarian had done his best, but mere bone and wood couldn't take this sort of strain. Feathers and beads whirled away and landed, smoking, in the road. A wheel parted company from its axle and bounded away, shedding spokes, as the machine took a curve almost horizontally. It made no real difference. Something like a soul flickered in the air where the missing pieces had been. If you took a shining machine, and shone a light on it so that there were gleams and highlights, and then took away the machine but left the light ...

"I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram

On a silver black Phantom bike

Oh, when the metal is hot and the engine is hungry

And we're all about to see the light"

And then consider:

Death was aware that at some point he would have to stop. But it was creeping up on him that in whatever dark vocabulary the ghost machine had been envisaged, the words "slow down" were as inconceivable as “drive safely." It was not in its very nature to reduce speed in any circumstances other than the dramatically calamitous at the end of the third verse.

The Third Verse in question?

"But I can't stop thinking of you

And I never see the sudden curve 'til it's way too late

And I never see the sudden curve 'til it's way too late"

GNU Terry Pratchett

And may his puns and allusions never cease to sneak up on us

[knitmeapony]

Every time I see this post, I learn about a new Pterry work of genius. GNU Terry Pratchett.

[thepenultimaterolo]

My latest one was during a recent rereading of Night Watch (this time in audiobook form), after Vimes says something sarcastic that no-one else realises is sarcastic:

"They ought to teach dark sarcasm at school, he thought."

And since the first time I read it I have become more familiar with Pink Floyd:

[startabby]

Oh jeeze, the vetinari one had me dying of laughter. I never caught that one at all...

[dduane]

World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for

This is worth taking note of.

[startabby]

Absolutely a concern.

[the-wolf-and-moon]

 Abell 21, Medusa Nebula, Dreadful Beauty

[startabby]

Nature really is just so... chef's kiss.

[cyberxbattalion]

[startabby]

pretty much.

[shyjusticewarrior]

At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.

[startabby]

agreed.

[friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog]

Reblog if reading someone else’s fanfiction has helped you get through a hard day

[startabby]

100% this. Even when I can’t write, I can always find time to read :-)