Probably one of the shortest stories I’ve ever written today on the Tale. We will leave it just as it becomes something that means something … something that is worthy of…

 

Discussion
By TeraS

 

Those that find their way to the Realm often expect that Tera would never have time for them. After all, she is the Queen, those asking for her time must be many, and so, because of this, so many simply never expect to actually encounter her.

Of course, Tera being who she is, there is always a part of her that has time for others. Thus, visitors to her Realm could find themselves in a moment like this:

“May I offer you something, Theodore?”

“It’s Theo, please. And no thank you, Ma’am. I’m fine.”

“Well, if you’d like me to use “Theo,” then I expect you to call me Tera, otherwise I shall be using your proper name—quite a lot, I think.”

“Yes Ma’a— … Tera.”

The smile he received from her was stunning: a warm, truthful, caring grin—which wasn’t a surprise considering who she was and the stories about her. Right or wrong, they were all clear on one point: when you were in her presence, you were the only one who mattered. Settling into her chair, she rested her chin onto her left hand and studied him for a moment before asking: “What would you like to talk about?”

Fidgeting slightly, he replied: “Tails.”

There was a nod for him to continue, her own tail arching behind her to seemingly look at him.

“I would like to submit myself, to be the slave of the One Who Is Not Named.”

The tip of her tail turned sideways slightly, as if unsure of what had just been said.

“Your Realm is beautiful—wonderful, really—but …”

“But it isn’t what your desires are drawing you to.”

“No.”

She tapped a finger against her lips, then: “You do understand that submitting yourself to Her isn’t that simple. You have to be committed to both of Us.”

“I don’t … I’m sorry, I don’t care about you, Tera … I mean … I don’t not care about you … ummm … I only…”

He was brought up short by Tera’s tail beginning to turn black. He knew exactly what that meant and who it was. The only thing to do, as her tail turned blacker and blacker, her hair turned flame red then beyond, and her horns the same deepest ebony of her tail, was to scramble from the chair he had been in and fall to his knees. He didn’t look up—didn’t dare to—as She spoke.

“You are not worthy of submitting to either of us.”

He didn’t reply, but just continued to look at the floor as he heard Her descend from her throne. The sound of Her heels walking towards him was like thunder in his ears.

“You are selfish and self-centered and you are not worthy.”

The words bit into him. He closed his eyes as She rejected him out of turn. She came closer. He could smell her now; the scent of leather, cherries, and latex was unmistakable. He had known it for so long, even if he had never experienced it before.

She paused in front of him. Opening his eyes just slightly, he could see a pair of black leather boots. He wanted to look upwards, to see them clinging to Her legs, to glimpse the latex skirt around Her hips, the leather corset that worshipped Her form, to see the glint of light against the black latex opera gloves with which She could, if She wanted, control him …

… like in his dreams.

“You ask to submit? What gives you the right?”

There was but a whisper: “It is the old way. I submit myself to your will.”

He felt Her hand running through his hair, as if examining him, before She fully entangled Her hand and pulled slightly: “The old ways are gone. They are no more.”

The pull made him look upwards, but he continued to keep his eyes closed. If he looked, he would fall to Her will, Her power that had been over him from the moment he had learned of Her. “I claim the right to be considered.”

He felt the tip of Her tail stroking his cheek: “Very well. You are refused.”

The shiver that passed through him was terrible. She had formally refused him. By the laws of the old ways She had the right to discard him, change him, or take that which was most precious to him. She could do anything … and he knew it.

“You think it is so simple to be allowed to serve? To submit? To be collared and be a pet? It never was and never will be.” Her breath was hot against his ear, he imagined Her now, seductively close to him, Her body so close now that he mewled quietly. “It is not a game. It is not something you can have because you ask.” A whimper of need escaped him as the truth of his folly was slowly revealed: “A collar is a gift. It has meaning. It is not adornment alone. It is a symbol of My will and your submission to Me.”

Her hand moved to cup his chin: “It marks those I choose as ours. I would never choose one that could not accept both of us.” Her voice became less harsh, but her touch on his chin did not waver: “You cannot serve half a Mistress. That would mean you do not worship her properly.”

He couldn’t argue with Her. He had thought that being Hers would be what She wanted. Opening his eyes, he startled at what he saw.

It was Tera.

She drew her thumb over his lips: “You cannot discuss your needs alone. You cannot just give up or give in without understanding. That’s what she is telling you.” Releasing him, she walked to her chair, no throne. It had been a chair before, it was a throne for Tail, it was a chair now … except that it was a throne, because the Queen was sitting in it. She settled there, then motioned for him to approach her. When he was in his place, at her feet, she spoke again. “You never wanted to discuss anything before, now we are going to discuss your needs, Theo. Perhaps then we’ll both know what you want and why.”

He was quiet for a time, not knowing where to start, when she asked: “Can I offer you something, Theo?”

He allowed himself a small smile: “Thank you, but I’ll be fine.”

Tera nodded and smiled in return: “I think you will be … in time …”

For everyone who meets Tera, it is when the exchange becomes a discussion that something truly worthwhile begins …

Adopt a Dalek Cartoonist to draw another full year of Dalek and Doctor Who cartoons.

With a mere handful of Dalek cartoonists remaining in the wild today, now is the time to help halt the decline with Patreon. Your monthly donations will provide the funds for a single cartoonist to create another full year of Dalek and Doctor Who cartoons on a daily basis. They will also create a local cartoonist reserve in the form of a small studio, heating and much needed food to enrich their habitat.

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I need your support to keep creating interesting content.

I have been a freelance cartoonist since 1986. I worked as an in-house cartoonist for Acne, Britain’s first alternative children’s comic for 7 years, going on to create my own publication, an environmental children’s comic, called The Big Greenie.

I am a creative person. I draw cartoons, make digital art, sing and write songs, play guitar and even paint! All the time I am seeing things and being inspired. I struggle to have a quiet moment away from my brain and stop it from having ideas, especially when I am not carrying a pen – I forget more than I remember!

I am a licensed BBC artist, and have created the graphic design for a range of official Doctor Who and other science fiction products. I am probably better known for being the most prolific unofficial Dalek cartoonist on the web.

Due to a series of setbacks, maintaining my day to day existence means I seldom have the opportunity to put pen to paper as I would like. I can’t afford paid advertising and spend a lot of my time trying to promote myself on social media to keep myself from an imminent financial mess. I am currently funding myself through merchandise sold online. However, I need to find a way to support myself regularly or I will have to work full time in a factory or wherever will have me. This is not were my talents lie, but I need a reliable salary.

One of my cartoons from the Daily Dalek Webcomic

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My goal is to produce another full year of the Daily Dalek webcomic, plus Doctor Who cartoons and miscellaneous gag cartoons – basically be a full time cartoonist. I have always wanted a book of my work, something I can hold in my hands and shout “LOOK I DID IT” . . ! Your contributions will be put towards the initial layout costs for the first small run of books to sell online which I am hoping will lead onto the production of actual real 100% unofficial books!

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The post Ways to learn. appeared first on Indexed.

supercilious: haughtily disdainful or contemptuous.

buy this print!

Here is a comic about a man I admire very much! Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was an early champion of LGBT rights, and maybe the first person to speak publicly for them as he did in Munich in 1867. The last picture there is the place where he spoke. He used the word "Urning" for gay men, a term he coined, because even the word "homosexual" wasn't invented yet (it would be soon after). I only found out about him last fall, which is surprising and also sadly not surprising. But he was really amazing, I'm sure you will agree.

Hark! A Vagrant is a strange mix, sometimes the comics are straight jokes and sometimes, like here, I just want to talk about someone I think is great in a way that's easy to pick up on - comics are great for that! And I tell you what, I got so much out of this particular collection, of all the things I read. Here is a link:

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs:
Urning Pride and the First Known Gay Activist
Translated and Edited by Michael Lombardi-Nash, PhD

The document is a mix of things, essays and Karl's own writings and I think you will like it very much. I'm going to leave you with the epitaph on the stone his friends put up for him, he had many friends and admirers. It reads like a little affectionate biography.


Karl Henrich Ulrichs
who was born in Westerfeld near East Friesland
He distinguished himself and became renowned among
his equals by his mental faculties in the humanities and other disciplines
through instruction he received in Gottingen and Berlin.
He was concerned about new problems in anthropology and jurisprudence.
He had a remarkable sense of duty.
He was not elevated to prosperity nor was he humbled
by the attacks from his adversaries.
As a pauper he left the region of Hanover and went into exile.
He traveled through a great part of Europe.
He displayed everywhere a model character by his knowledge and virtue.
Finally he came to live in Aquila in central Italy to live for a long time.
He edited a Latin journal titled "Alaudae" [Larks]
which received praise from the old and new world.
Not complaining, not anguished, he died in our city in his 70th year
on the day before the Ides of July 1895
His loyal friends and admirers here and across the Alps
joined in to pay for this gift for their best friend whom
they mourn the loss of, and mock his lack of fortune
by this truly excellent monument.


"New problems in anthropology and jurisprudence." Victorians, amirite? But still I mean, who doesn't want their friends to mock their lack of fortune with truly excellent monuments?

The post Actually, read everything. appeared first on Indexed.

apatetic: assuming colors and forms that effect deceptive camouflage.

abstemious: sparing or moderate in eating and drinking; temperate in diet.

Hovertext: Pro Tip: Any quote that sounds pithy was either (A) never said by the person who supposedly said it, or (B) at least somewhat contradicted by the surrounding sentences in the original source.

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I encountered this nifty fact reading Dr. Liben's new, and excellent, paper! 

Stop Jupiter

I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely?

—Dillon

More than we can afford.

Spacecraft sometimes perform close flybys of heavy, fast-moving planets, which can let them gain speed without using fuel.[1]It may sound strange that you could gain speed by flying toward a planet and then away from it, since intuitively it seems like any speed you gain from flying toward it, you should lose flying away. But it's not really about gravity at all; gravity assists could work just as well with ropes or springs, if you could make them big enough. When you you fly toward a planet, swing around it, and fly back in the direction you came, it's as if you "bounced off" the planet. If the planet is moving, this bounce can give you an extra kick—like a tennis ball thrown at the windshield of a passing truck. You can check out What If #38 for details—or, at least, a drawing of the tennis ball thing. Due to conservation of momentum, the maneuver also slows the planet down very slightly, but no one really worries about that.

Planets don't slow down much during a flyby because they're so much heavier than spacecraft. When New Horizons flew by Jupiter, it gained about 4,000 m/s of velocity, while Jupiter lost about 10^-21 m/s.[2]The geometry is a little complicated, since they were changing both speed and direction. If you want to learn more, look for a copy of this paper; it's a great tutorial.

10^-21 meters per second may not sound like much, but it very slightly changed Jupiter's orbit, shortening its year and bringing it slightly closer to the Sun. Thanks to that flyby, by the time the Sun goes supernova, Jupiter's calendar will be several dozen nanoseconds out of sync from where it would be otherwise!

"Several dozen nanoseconds out of sync" isn't really satisfying, so we'll definitely need more than one flyby. How many can we pull off?

The New Horizons mission cost the US government about \$700,000,000 over the full planned lifetime of the mission from 2001 to 2016. Over that same period, the government spent about \$47,879,840,000,000 on other things. If we cut all the spending on those other things[3]It's probably nothing important. and funneled it all into New Horizons probes, we could have launched 68,000 identical New Horizons probes.

This would create some problems. For one, New Horizons carries a chunk of plutonium for power. This chunk—about 10 kg of it—was made from uranium in a reactor. To make enough plutonium for 68,000 New Horizons would require a substantial chunk of the world's uranium reserves.

But it gets worse.[4]It always seems to, with plutonium. When NASA launches a spacecraft carrying plutonium, they estimate the odds of a launch accident which would release radioactive material into the atmosphere. Usually, these odds are around 1 in 300. With 68,000 launches, then, we can expect a little over 200 nuclear accidents, which probably isn't good.

But it would all be worth it if we could slow down Jupiter! Sadly, 68,000 New Horizons probes aren't nearly enough. We'd still only rob Jupiter of a tiny fraction of its speed. Over the lifetime of the Solar System, the error in Jupiter's calendar would only add up to 2 milliseconds.

If we made the spacecraft cheaper, we could send more of them, but sooner or later we'd start running out of materials. We'd definitely run out of fuel for all these rocket launches, but let's assume we've built some kind of space elevator to make launches cheap. We'd run out of uranium (to make the plutonium) pretty quickly, but we could replace the uranium with a chunk of lead—after all, this spacecraft doesn't really need to work.

Eventually, though, we'd start running out of lead, too. If we replaced the lead with something else—say, rocks, or old garbage—we'd run out of that, too. At some point, in our desperate attempts to reduce Jupiter's forward speed, we'd be reduced to stuffing handfuls of rocks and dirt into a burlap sack with a NASA logo on the side.

Then, believe it or not, we would run out of rocks.

The Earth's crust only has so much stuff[5]This is the technical term. in it. Even if we peeled up the upper few dozen kilometers of crust and flung it at Jupiter—and for the record, I do not recommend we do this—it would trim less than a single mile per hour off Jupiter's speed.

Really, it makes sense that this plan doesn't work. Earth weighs a lot less than Jupiter,[6]Earth weighs almost exactly pi milliJupiters. so even if we throw the entire Earth at Jupiter, it would still only reduce Jupiter's speed by a fraction of a percent—on the order of a few dozen miles per hour. The situation is similar to the one in the tennis ball analogy from earlier: If you want to stop a truck with tennis balls, the tennis balls need more momentum than the truck, which means they need to be extremely heavy, fast, or both.

And at the core, that's the problem with this idea. Gravity assists are just like throwing a tennis ball at a speeding truck, and to stop a truck ...

... you need an awfully big tennis ball.

1. Use the line as-is. I had to cram them into 140 characters, so they're not ideal but changing them seems like cheating. 
2. Write each story in real-time start-to-finish. No starting with a conclusion and working backwards. No writing/editing offline and pasting it in. 
3. No major edits. I can go back and correct spelling, grammar and awkward wording but no retconning the story to fit. 

• Death Takes a Lunch Break
• Temp Work
• Midpoint

Hovertext: I still want one.

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encomium: a formal expression of high praise.

groggery: a slightly disreputable barroom.

calumniate: to make false and malicious statements about; slander.

Fire From Moonlight

Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire?

—Rogier Spoor

At first, this sounds like a pretty easy question.

A magnifying glass concentrates light on a small spot. As many mischevious kids can tell you, a magnifying glass as small as a square inch in size can collect enough light to start a fire. A little Googling will tell you that the Sun is 400,000 times brighter than the Moon, so all we need is a 400,000-square-inch magnifying glass. Right?

Wrong. Here's the real answer: You can't start a fire with moonlight[1]Pretty sure this is a Bon Jovi song. no matter how big your magnifying glass is. The reason is kind of subtle. It involves a lot of arguments that sound wrong but aren't, and generally takes you down a rabbit hole of optics.

First, here's a general rule of thumb: You can't use lenses and mirrors to make something hotter than the surface of the light source itself. In other words, you can't use sunlight to make something hotter than the surface of the Sun.

There are lots of ways to show why this is true using optics, but a simpler—if perhaps less satisfying—argument comes from thermodynamics:

Lenses and mirrors work for free; they don't take any energy to operate.[2]And, more specifically, everything they do is fully reversible—which means you can add them in without increasing the entropy of the system. If you could use lenses and mirrors to make heat flow from the Sun to a spot on the ground that's hotter than the Sun, you'd be making heat flow from a colder place to a hotter place without expending energy. The second law of thermodynamics says you can't do that. If you could, you could make a perpetual motion machine.

The Sun is about 5,000°C, so our rule says you can't focus sunlight with lenses and mirrors to get something any hotter than 5,000°C. The Moon's sunlit surface is a little over 100°C, so you can't focus moonlight to make something hotter than about 100°C. That's too cold to set most things on fire.

"But wait," you might say. "The Moon's light isn't like the Sun's! The Sun is a blackbody—its light output is related to its high temperature. The Moon shines with reflected sunlight, which has a "temperature" of thousands of degrees—that argument doesn't work!"

It turns out it does work, for reasons we'll get to later. But first, hang on—is that rule even correct for the Sun? Sure, the thermodynamics argument seems hard to argue with,[3]Because it's correct. but to someone with a physics background who's used to thinking of energy flow, it may seem hard to swallow. Why can't you concentrate lots of sunlight onto a point to make it hot? Lenses can concentrate light down to a tiny point, right? Why can't you just concentrate more and more of the Sun's energy down onto the same point? With over 10²⁶ watts available, you should be able to get a point as hot as you want, right?

Except lenses don't concentrate light down onto a point—not unless the light source is also a point. They concentrate light down onto an area—a tiny image of the Sun.[4]Or a big one! This difference turns out to be important. To see why, let's look at an example:

This lens directs all the light from point A to point C. If the lens were to concentrate light from the Sun down to a point, it would need to direct all the light from point B to point C, too:

But now we have a problem. What happens if light goes back from point C toward the lens? Optical systems are reversible, so the light should be able to go back to where it came from—but how does the lens know whether the light came from B or to A?

In general, there's no way to "overlay" light beams on each other, because the whole system has to be reversible. This keeps you from squeezing more light in from a given direction, which puts a limit on how much light you can direct from a source to a target.

Maybe you can't overlay light rays, but can't you, you know, sort of smoosh them closer together, so you can fit more of them side-by-side? Then you could gather lots of smooshed beams and aim them at a target from slightly different angles.

Nope, you can't do this.[5]We already know this, of course, since earlier we said that it would let you violate the second law of thermodynamics.

It turns out that any optical system follows a law called conservation of étendue. This law says that if you have light coming into a system from a bunch of different angles and over a large "input" area, then the input area times the input angle[6]Note to nitpickers: In 3D systems, this is technically the solid angle, the 2D equivalent of the regular angle, but whatever. equals the output area times the output angle. If your light is concentrated to a smaller output area, then it must be "spread out" over a larger output angle.

In other words, you can't smoosh light beams together without also making them less parallel, which means you can't aim them at a faraway spot.

There's another way to think about this property of lenses: They only make light sources take up more of the sky; they can't make the light from any single spot brighter,[7]A popular demonstration of this: Try holding up a magnifying glass to a wall. The magnifying glass collects light from many parts of the wall and sends them to your eye, but it doesn't make the wall look brighter. because it can be shown[8]This is left as an exercise for the reader. that making the light from a given direction brighter would violate the rules of étendue.[9]My résumé says étendue is my forté. In other words, all a lens system can do is make every line of sight end on the surface of a light source, which is equivalent to making the light source surround the target.

If you're "surrounded" by the Sun's surface material, then you're effectively floating within the Sun, and will quickly reach the temperature of your surroundings.[10](Very hot)

If you're surrounded by the bright surface of the Moon, what temperature will you reach? Well, rocks on the Moon's surface are nearly surrounded by the surface of the Moon, and they reach the temperature of the surface of the Moon (since they are the surface of the Moon.) So a lens system focusing moonlight can't really make something hotter than a well-placed rock sitting on the Moon's surface.

Which gives us one last way to prove that you can't start a fire with moonlight: Buzz Aldrin is still alive.

fubsy: short and stout.

Hovertext: We need to stop enabling Saturn, you guys.

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vicissitude: a change or variation occurring in the course of something.

When someone attacks political correctness in general, it means they have specific problematic views they don‘t want to discuss because then people will know that they’re bigots. Not always true, but almost always. Political correctness, or, as I like to call it, “being nice to people”, is a safe target for right-wing anger without ever getting into the real reason that anger exists.

The post Brostitutional Rights appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

Ravens’ fear of unseen snoopers hints they have theory of mind

There are three words that are used to excess when it comes to costumes. They are “Sexy”, “Devil” and “Costume”. Not necessarily in that order, but they do appear. The thing is, it is a rare costume that actually should use those three words and as such it’s more likely that something very tacky or ugly is attempting to masquerade as being something more than it is.

This is called, surprisingly, the Sexy Devil Costume and it comes with the really amazingly ugly dress and that’s all. No horns or pitchfork or shoes. The rather sickly looking piece of fabric can be found for less than $20 US at many sites on the web.

I think there is a bit of dishonesty in what is being sold here as since all you are buying is the red dress, how is it that this costume can be really called a Devil costume in the first place?

If at least the horns were included I could accept that what they were selling was some half-hearted attempt at a Devil costume. But in this case that simply isn’t true.

This is a prime example of something being left over in a warehouse somewhere and being put on sale with a description that is bait for the search engines to latch onto.

I would hope that whomever would even think about buying this, and it wouldn’t be me I can promise you, that they would read the description which is in very small print and is hidden away underneath a button. If one didn’t then what arrives will be quite the surprise…

Still another zero out of five pitchforks.

Just a sad costume by far…

 

Tera