Distraction Alley

[theonlybluephoenix]

Recently discovered I have OCD at my ripe old age and it went a little something like this:

Me: So we wanted to bring up the possibility that I might have symptoms of OCD.

My awesome psych: Oh yeah, you do. I already have it written in your chart, but what makes you think you have OCD?

(I originally meant to post this about two years ago or so. Heyo! That's the ADHD)

[theonlybluephoenix]

I suspect Tumblr will be treated much the same as I've treated my now defunct social media outlets Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LiveJournal, and MySpace

(though I do miss janky old MySpace at times - it really was My Space, complete with emo punk music and flashy glittering side panels and I spent an inordinate amount of time personalizing my page with my fledgling website design & programming skills)

: I'll pop in, sometimes frequently, maybe post, maybe just wander around seeing what folks are up to, then disappear.

Possibly returning within days, more likely in weeks or months, but maybe not coming by for years.

Actually, I do technically still have Twitter, but I've been on hiatus since it's been a mess and was just getting messier. The scent of musk became overwhelming even before the bumbling billionaire buyout breakdown.

Admittedly, tumblr's science and sewing tags might keep me hooked more than I intend. So much been loving those.

As a reward for reading my nonsense, please enjoy a sassy orange tabby.

[mindblowingscience]

Once in 50,000-year comet may be visible to the naked eye

A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said.

The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year.

After traveling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1.

It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon.

The comet “will be brightest when it is closest to the Earth”, Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP.

Continue Reading

[theonlybluephoenix]

Looks like we have some plans this month, though we might have to get out of the city to be able to see it.

I can't help but be enthralled/engrossed by the idea that Neanderthals and early homo sapiens were around the last time this comet swung by. The historian in me delights in contemplating what they might have thought while also relishing the opportunity to share the experience.

Living history.

[mindblowingscience]

Humans Still Have The Genes For a Full Coat of Fur, Scientists Discover

Fur is a defining feature of being a mammal.

Fur is a defining feature of being a mammal. But bald is beautiful for several mammalian weirdos, including dolphins, mole rats, elephants, and of course, humans. Not to mention a handy adaptation.

Yet all our ancestors had plenty of fur. According to a new study on relatively hairless mammals, we still have the means to be hirsute. Those genes, it seems, have simply been switched off.

In their hunt through nearly 20,000 coding genes, and 350,000 regulatory ones, compared across 62 different mammal species, University of Pittsburgh geneticist Amanda Kowalczyk and her team found a mechanism behind these fascinatingly parallel changes.

This re-emergence of a trait across unrelated lineages is known as convergent evolution. In the case of hairlessness, it evolved independently at least nine different times along different branches of the mammalian family tree.

The selection pressures for this lack of hair are just as varied as the species that have lost their fuzz. For elephants, it’s a way to lose heat faster; for marine mammals, being sleeker means less resistance moving in the water; and for us, well, there are possibly multiple contributing pressures, including thermoregulation and reduction of parasites.

Continue Reading

[just--space]

Stars and Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula : The eggs from this gigantic chicken may form into stars. The featured emission nebula, shown in scientifically assigned colors, is cataloged as IC 2944 but known as the Running Chicken Nebula for the shape of its greater appearance. Seen toward the bottom of the image are small, dark molecular clouds rich in obscuring cosmic dust. Called Thackeray’s Globules for their discoverer, these “eggs” are potential sites for the gravitational condensation of new stars, although their fates are uncertain as they are also being rapidly eroded away by the intense radiation from nearby young stars. Together with patchy glowing gas and complex regions of reflecting dust, these massive and energetic stars form the open cluster Collinder 249. This gorgeous skyscape spans about 60 light-years at the nebula’s estimated 6,500 light-year distance. via NASA

[only-cat-memes]

Your daily dose of cat memes

[theonlybluephoenix]

These be mine.

[thoughtportal]

Full Draft of Theory & Craft of Digital Preservation

This weekend I’m submitting the full draft of the manuscript for my book The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation to the publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Update: to make it easier to read, I’ve shared a PDF preprint of the whole draft.

I’ve had a lot of fun working on this on nights and weekends over the last year. I have also learned a ton from everyone who has read drafts of the work in progress.

I’ve had a few folks reach out to me after reading parts of drafts and say things like “I’d love to read more of this. When will it be out?” I’m not sure exactly how long it will take for the next round of review and all the improvements that will come from working with a great press. With that said, drafts of the entire book are now online. Instead of having folks pick through my previous blog posts with the links, I figured I would put them all together in order in this post.

So to that end, below you can find an index to the eight chapters and the intro and conclusion. I’m going to leave this up with all the comments in them. I went through and resolved comments offline in my own copies of these but thought it would be fun to leave up the messy original drafts and a record of all the great input and ideas that folks have offered up to improve the text.

Table of Contents

Introduction Beyond Digital Hype & Digital Anxiety (7 pages)

Section One: Theory of Digital Preservation

Ch 1: Preservation’s Divergent Lineages (14 pages)

Ch 2: Understanding Digital Objects (12 pages)

Ch 3: Challenges & Opportunities for Digital Preservation (11 pages)

Section Two: The Craft of digital Preservation

Ch 4: The Craft of Digital Preservation (6 pages)

Ch 5: Preservation Intent & Collection Development (13 pages)

Ch 6: Managing Copies & Formats (15 pages)

Ch 7: Arranging & Describing Digital Objects (19 pages)

Ch 8: Enabling Multimodal Access & Use (18 pages)

Conclusion: Tools for Looking Forward (9 pages)

[theonlybluephoenix]

I'm not up for reading this at the moment but definitely want to look into it, so I'm saving it here for now.

[hyperallergic]

At a recent preview of The Met’s “Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art,” visitors marveled quietly at large relief stoneworks and painted ceramic vessels excavated from lost cities abandoned during the Classic Maya collapse. The galleries were softly lit if not totally dark — opening the floor for the centuries-old works to speak for themselves.

With both the natural decay and intentional destruction of almost all Maya texts, ancient Maya spirituality is deciphered and analyzed primarily through these precious objects. 

Read Rhea Nayyar’s full article on hyperallergic.com.

[wanderanwonder]

So, according to this article 34,000 new digital images of medieval items were uploaded on this site:

https://www.europeana.eu

But it's not just medieval stuff, it's a lot more! Search or pick a theme and explore. It's a great resource of european historical items, documents and images, for writing, art, researching and for whatever else strikes your fancy. You got music, maps, art, fashion, newspapers, magazines, manuscripts, sports items etc.

The organization and filtering system is pretty great too! You can filter by language, country of origin, materials, techniques (depending on theme of course) and many more. Also, you can even filter by usage rights

Give it a go, have fun!

Edit with other interesting things I found under a read more because it's getting kinda long, but tl;dr browse by topics, read articles and download some free colouring books

Edit: On the collections tab you can find more topics by which you can browse and you can even make your own galleries, like your own private museum collection 💜

They even have a section where you can download colouring books

Colouring Books

Bring culture to life with Europeana's range of colouring books

[oversettext]

Quote by Alan Watts

[spacewonder19]

Bright orange cloud of CB 130-3 © ESA/Hubble

[poetry-siir]

IG: ousíapoeticaok

[fuckyeahastrophysics]

Webb Telescope Captures Fiery Formation of New Star

Full Resolution PNG Image (For Display)

Full Resolution TIF Image (For Print)

[typhlonectes]

Octopuses Caught on Camera Throwing Debris at Each Other

Scientists say this is the first time they have documented the behavior among the tentacled sea creatures

Octopuses are primarily anti-social loners. They don’t hunt in groups, and they lead solitary lives. When the circumstances are just right, they will opt to live near each other, but this is motivated by habitat needs, not a desire to be among their fellow tentacled creatures.

In fact, octopuses might not always enjoy being in close proximity with their neighbors: Sometimes, they’ll throw silt and shells at one another, according to new research published last week in Plos One…

Read more:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopuses-caught-on-camera-throwing-debris-at-each-other-180981109/

[theonlybluephoenix]

Hello Tumblr Denizens & Welcome to the Lair of the Blue Phoenix. I've been roaming the internet since the mid-'90s at least but managed to avoid a Tumblr blog until the monster demanded I become a tumblrina & follow her. So here I am & hope you enjoy my nonsense should you deign to peruse this blog.

Enjoy the inevitable cat photos!

The hideaway black & white tuxedo cat is Ninja, more often referred to as Kitten or Baby - or Brat when he's waking folks up between two and five a.m. when he's bored or hungry; The lovely orange & white tabby cat is Orange Whip, usually called Orange or Red but also Mama & Beautiful. She's occasionally also called Demon Cat or Danger Cat and rightly so.

The photo below shows the kitten sleeping in the cat tree condo with all four black & white paws with pink & black toe beans peeping out, but the rest of his body - except a few faint white whiskers deep in the depths of the shadows - swathed in an almost impenetrable black, a few glints of light reflecting off a glossy knee. A blue, soft cloth lunchbox covered in various cats hangs on the wall to the right of the cat tree - bright white sunlight warmly washing out the design along the left panel closest to the window curtained in rich scarlet - with a partial view of a poster stating "OWL LADY

REWARD

1,000,000,000,000" above the lunchbox.