#monstrata

[natalieironside]

What if gay sex was called transponding and instead of tops and bottoms ppl were called transmitters and responders

[natalieironside]

I came up with the idea for the scary space alien computer b/c I was on a late-night wikipedia binge (as one does) and I had what you might call a Lovecraft moment. It was like this.

So I was reading about solitons. A soliton is a persistent and semi-stable irregularity in a magnetic field, sort of an electromagnetic analogue to how come gyres in the ocean don't collapse under their own weight despite being made of water. And learning this information made me feel a profound sense of unease as though I'd just watched a rly good horror film. Like I had to get up and go outside afterwards.

So of course I sat a while and thought about why in God's name my mind had reacted so strongly and so negatively to learning about topological defects in magnetic fields; that's just silly. And what I think happened is that my soft, squishy monkey brain which was developed over a gazillion years of random trial and error to accomplish tasks like "find berry" and "avoid tiger" has trouble encompassing the idea that the speed of light is finite and the movement of light is quantized. Monkey brain can't see all the little photons slowly and ponderously bumbling across the room when someone flips a light switch, therefore monkey brain knows as a stone-cold fact that the speed of light is both instantaneous and simultaneous; things that happen at the speed of light are things that Just Happen without room for the possibility of delay, and monkey brain really, really doesn't like the thought of electromagnetic radiation moving through physical space at a finite speed the way kinetic energy moves through water.

So, according to monkey brain, the idea that a disturbance in a magnetic field (thing that moves at light speed) can possibly linger longer than an instant (however the hell long an instant is, that's not a unit of measure) without collapsing means that Something Is Wrong, mysterious shapes and colours et cetera et cetera, and I think it briefly evoked the same sort of unease as a scene in a horror movie wherein a character walks away from a mirror and their reflection stays put and watches them go

[natalieironside]

Feliĉa has a vast online presence which consists almost entire of femme fashion selfies, traumacore posting, and amateur hardcore pornography. Her online friends are always a bit perplexed when they happen to find out what Dr. Ingvarsdottir does for a living.

[natalieironside]

I got bitten by Count Diracula and he sucked all the math outta my body

[natalieironside]

Lonnie after hanging out with the anarchists for about 5 minutes:

[natalieironside]

Lonnie: "Hey, you don't have six other evil exes I need to worry about, do you? Legally you have to tell me or it's entrapment."

[natalieironside]

Feliĉa loves BDSM for the same reason she loves mathematics: There's a place you can go where the world has some goddamn rules and the rules make some goddamn sense

[natalieironside]

the way i personally got into baseball was through the work of jon bois and alex rubenstein and their dorktown baseball videos on secret base's youtube channel! they make amazing videos about sports that are extremely accessible to non-sports people. personal highlights are:

how to score 10 runs in the first inning and lose — this is a GREAT starting point bc itll set you up with some general knowledge about how the sport works AND introduce you to one of the weirdest games ever. this one's a favorite of mine to rewatch bc of the punchline.

rickey henderson crushed souls with unprecedented efficiency — this one's fun bc you get to learn abt an insanely talented player and also get introduced to the concept of base stealing.

getting plunked by a baseball is a noble and painful art — this one's just fun. introduces you to a fun statistical character.

and if you want some longer, more narrative series from them:

captain ahab: the story of dave stieb — a 4-part series abt one of the best pitchers of the 1980s, who also happened to be maybe the most unlucky sports player ever to exist

the history of the seattle mariners — 6 part series on the seattle mariners, but touches on lots of other famous baseball personalities. the first video is called "this is not an endorsement of arson" and it rules.

hope this helps! i considered myself to be the OPPOSITE of a sports person for the vast majority of my life, and these two dorks are basically personally responsible for the fact that i actually like and understand them now.

Thank <3