since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage"
some people think this is a shitpost so i want to clarify that i am dead fucking serious. make mage the official gender neutral honorific NOW. i want it on my passport. i want it on my bank account. i want doctors and judges to use it for me. i don't care if it sounds a little silly. people thought "missus" sounded crass at first. call me mg.
benefits of mg: • easy to pronounce, even for children (though kids 4 & younger may pronounce it more like "mayd" or "maygh")
• ONE SYLLABLE!!! ("individual" is too goddamn LONG.) you have to be able to say it quickly and casually
• ends in a soft consonant sound, so it'll flow right into the next word ("ind" halts the whole sentence) • fits neatly into the existing structure as a relative of master/mistress that can be abbreviated down to an m and one other letter • distinct enough that it can't be mistaken for either gendered term (if you call me mix I'll kill you. it sounds like miss with extra steps)
• wizard.
drawbacks: • there aren't any • yes, i know about milligrams and magnesium. i don't give a shit. ms can also mean microsoft. who cares.
The thing I (and many others) detested most about ms. when it first came out was that nobody was sure how to pronounce it — or even what it meant. I feel the same problems may plague "mg.", though I kinda like it, and I'm not even a nonbinary.
I referred to something as a “real Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra moment” in conversation with someone who has never seen TNG, and let me tell you, that was a real Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra moment
This collection of email sign-offs over on Arena is a treasure trove. I usually sign-off with Waving from Brooklyn, or Warmly, but I might have to add a few of these to the list now.
I got a cold and watched that Jenny Nicholson video about the Star Wars hotel (it’s very good) and fully lost my mind: even after experiencing a comprehensive four-hour deconstruction of why it didn’t work for Star Wars, I still think a version of this would absolutely work for Star Trek. Take my hand and walk with me on my journey into madness, where I have infinite money, talent, and team to make it all happen!!
Overall vibe
If you want to make a hotel/resort experience that takes place inside a fake spaceship, I still think Star Trek is the way to go: so much of Star Trek takes place on ships, and we’ve seen the rooms are pretty nice!! Like the Star Wars one, my Star Trek hotel is also a simulated starship, but with better rooms and more fun stuff to do.
Are you ready for this shit
Can you tell I drew this myself
You’ll arrive at Farpoint Station,* where the concierge checks you in and your luggage gets whisked away by station staff. Gift shop’s also here. When you’re checked in and ready to head to your room, you’re brought to one of several transporter rooms. If you never went to the Star Trek Experience at the Vegas Hilton when it was active, I am truly sorry for you, because they had a ride whose boarding process included getting beamed away: you and your pals were herded into a zone where you were clearly meant to board a run-of-the-mill 20th-century simulator ride, and then there were jets of mist and a sound and suddenly you were in a transporter room on board the goddamn USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. It was fucking magical and I never, ever want it explained to me. Anyway, that’s what happens to you at my Star Trek hotel: you step onto a transporter pad and get beamed from Farpoint to a Galaxy-class Federation starship. Exit the transporter room and walk down the ship’s corridor to take the turbolifts to Cargo Bay 1, where a “temporary muster point” has been set up (this is where the guest services desks will be), or just follow the lit-up companel signs to your cabin. Yes, it will look like guest quarters aboard the Enterprise-D, more or less — maybe a little smaller — but it’ll have the carpet, the plant, the glass coffee table, and most importantly a window that looks out into space.
Or!!! If you booked the resort, keep heading down the hallway and take another turbolift to a different section of the ship where the holodeck entrances are. The holodecks, naturally, are running a Risa program, so you walk through the doors and under the arch and suddenly you’re outdoors looking at a beautiful landscape with a pool and whatnot, plus the resort accommodations where the more conventional fancy rooms are, and also the restaurants and entertainment venues, all themed. There’s a Quark’s. There’s a Klingon bar and grill. A Bolian salon/spa. Talaxian arcade?? Nausicaan axe-throwing pit?!?! Come on!!!!!!!!!
Here, have a floor plan
Key learnings
Two things stuck out to me that the Star Wars hotel fucked up that I think the Star Trek version can do better:
🤷♀️ LARP too complicated: Give ‘em credit where it’s due, the Star Wars hotel fucking swung for the fences trying to make a multi-hero story guests could integrate with, but it just didn’t work. Technical failures! Possible conceptual flaws! Too much stuff packed into the schedule!
The fix: Just make it mostly a hotel most of the time. One or two weekends a month, there’s a two-day fully-immersive LARP adventure that people explicitly book separately, and it’s more expensive (more on that later). But at all times, hotel staff will be in uniform with division colors that make sense: concierge and guest relations in red, support and janitorial in gold, teal for any medical personnel. I think that means the people working in food services have to wear that plaid/vest combo the Ten-Forward staff have on, but there are certainly worse outfits.
🌴 No resort: The food at the Star Wars hotel was good, but there was no pool and no other luxury resort type stuff to do. It didn’t sound relaxing.
The fix: Putting an actual resort in the Star Trek hotel under the guise of a permanently-running Risan holodeck program. The sheer elegance of it!! When the weather is bad, hotel staff in gold uniforms can make apologetic comments about how the sim’s malfunctioning.
Roleplay though
People are going to want to stay onboard the ship. That’s good! The thing about the ship cabins is you can build them in maybe two semicircular layers (the rooms will need to be curved because these are quarters onboard the saucer section, naturally) and just bury them underground. They don’t need real windows — you’re putting screens in that’ll show a space view, especially when the ship goes to warp and you can see those rainbow trails. Inside the semicircle there’s a lot of space where you can put the other, bigger sets: the bridge, main engineering, Ten-Forward, etc. None of those have real windows either, and also I don’t think it matters where you put them physically: just stick a pretend turbolift in front of all the entrances and make guests take those whenever they need to go there! One thing we’re also doing is putting little hidden speakers everywhere that put out a small amount of shipboard white noise; it may not even be noticeable on a conscious level, but it’ll be there and it’ll be soothing. This speaker network is also a great way to make an actual announcement if there’s a real park emergency.
During most of the month, I think the bridge and main engineering are mostly just photo ops — maybe you have to book a timeslot? Just so you’re guaranteed some time with just you and your buddies? But I also think there should be opportunities for what I’m going to call mini-LARPing: you and your pals can book an hour-long session and the staff trains and then runs you through a short scenario. If you’ve ever played Artemis or the actual Star Trek VR bridge crew game they put out a while ago, you know where I’m going with this: for however long, you and your friends are now the crew of a genuine-ass Federation starship trying to survive a battle! It’s fuckin’ Kobayashi Maru time, motherfuckers!! Everyone gets their own station! Lights flicker! Mist shoots out of stuff! The whole bridge shakes! There might be a warp core problem — better call down to main engineering! Whoever’s down there gets escape room-style minigames and puzzles to work out and help their shipmates. At some point — and this will happen in every run of every scenario — there’ll be a very mist-forward “coolant leak” near the warp core that forces whoever’s in the room to duck and roll beneath a descending garage-style blast door before heading up to the bridge to activate their station up there; bonus points if the player can work in a “We lost a lot of good people down there, Captain.” Maybe there’s an actor in makeup who menaces the crew on the main viewer from time to time (pick beforehand from a list of villains! want to fight Klingons? Romulans? a rogue Borg tactical sphere? etc). Can you see it? I can see it, and it fucking rules.
I must at this point mention that in my world, you can buy an add-on where a camera crew joins you, and they cut up the footage afterward to make you and your pals your very own mini-episode. Yes the editing and post-production are expensive and time-consuming; I’m creating jobs here!!!! Maybe …… okay, hear me out: there’s an array of hidden fixed cameras and microphones built discreetly into the set, and also players are issued a combadge with an individual RFID tracker that pings the cams and mics, so they only save footage when a player comes close. After the players are done, a machine algorithm uses the data gathered to assemble a rough timeline of each player’s material and create a draft movie that a human editor can pick up and fine-tune. Yeah?? When you check out, you get handed a USB drive that looks like an isolinear chip with your mini movie on it, and maybe another one with all the raw footage just in case you’re feeling ambitious!!!!
For one or two other weekends during every month, there’s a heavily advertised, much more involved, and way spendier LARP for people who really want to get into it. It takes place over two days. There are lots more actors portraying characters necessary for the plot/gameplay. Don’t bother packing for the daytime: all players are issued a uniform they get to keep afterward. Do I have any details on the scenario or RP? I do not. But I fully believe it’s possible to construct something you could run over the course of a weekend that would keep a hundred paying guests occupied, amused, and delighted, provided you have a truly ridiculous amount of money and people, which I do because this is utter fantasyland.
Also it probably won’t cost six grand. Probably??
Let’s gooooooooooooo
The rest of the time — and I cannot stress this enough — the Star Trek hotel is just a very heavily and specifically themed all-inclusive resort that has nice, fancy rooms and luxury amenities plus bookable ship cabins and opportunities for photo shoots or quick one-shot roleplay adventures for the real heads. You don’t ever have to enter those latter parts if you don’t want to! You can just hang out at the resort and have fun with all the themed entertainment, which I must stress is going to be both in-universe plausible and great, with something for everybody. Yes, there’ll be a daycare, and yes, Flotter will be there in some capacity to entertain the kids. The food hall is my favorite part by far; I could pitch you Trek restaurant concepts all day. Romulan gourmet soup stand. Gummi candy store staffed by Ferengi where all the offerings are shaped like alien bugs. A vending machine where you can get a jumja stick or a three-pack of those nutrient pucks Picard and his new friends kept getting in “Allegiance.” There will be an entire plant-based food vendor with a wide variety of delicious options for all meals, and it will be run by Vulcans.
A word on the gift shop
Question for you: have you ever watched a Star Trek show and seen a Starfleet officer pull on a jacket or shoulder a duffel bag that had the words “STAR TREK” on it? If so, then friend, I want to know where you get your hallucinogens because I want to experience this exactly once. All of the gift shops on my hotel grounds sell responsibly sourced, highly thought-out, well-made items that would be in-world plausible and have no obvious branding. Of course you can get a hand-carved horga'hn, but let’s go bigger. Why not a light-up Tox Uthat for your nightstand? Ressikan flute for you, queen? How about a whole-ass knife store that’s nothing but various kinds of Klingon cutlery? There will absolutely be an entire tailor’s shop whose whole job is to put you in the Starfleet uniform of your choice; there may or may not be a Cardassian managing the place who’s got a 50/50 cheerful/menacing vibe going on. There’ll be not one but two stores that sell little models of ships: the regular ones and the gold ones. Don’t tell me you can’t picture it!!!!!
I think that’s about it
Thank you for coming along with me on this bespoke journey into 100% insanity; now can somebody put me in touch with the Star Trek licensing people and also give me a billion dollars to build all this? Okay, thanks a lot!!
For timeline purposes and because it’s fun, I’m positing a version of Farpoint that got built after the events of the TNG premiere where the Denebians got their act together and just built a normal surface base without suborning an interstellar lifeform.
Based on data from NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), Villanova University researchers developed a map of the magnetic fields in the Milky Way.
The colors show the interaction between warmer dust clouds (pink), cooler ones (blue), and magnetic fields, indicated by radio filaments (yellow) — mysterious tendrils up to 150 light-years long. By revealing variations in the orientation of magnetic fields across dust clouds (some with fanciful names like The Brick and Three Little Pigs), this map offers a first glimpse at the complex arrangements of dust and magnetism in the CMZ.
Pub Choir is an Australia-based organization that gets large crowds singing popular tunes, in three-part harmony no less.
Everybody can sing. Like, not well, but literally. Why should being average at something stop you from doing it!? It hasn’t yet… Singing is good for you, it’s EASY, and Pub Choir is here to show you how.
With a show that is equal parts music, comedy, and beer, Pub Choir is a euphoric sensation that transforms a crowd of tipsy strangers into a legendary choir.
By the end of the show the YOU will be belting out a popular song in three-part harmony.
In the video above, they get a crowd of 1600 people signing Creep by Radiohead. Beautiful.
You can find more of their performances on their YouTube channel, including Tina Turner’s The Best, Africa by Toto, and Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty.
Hey kids! What sound does a woolly horse-sheep make?
The image above is what you get when you ask dalle-3 (via chatgpt) for some basic educational material: "Please generate an illustrated poster to help children learn which sounds common animals make. Each animal should be pictured with a speech bubble spelling out the animal's sound."
Here's another, generated with the same prompt:
There is so much not to like about how people are using image generators to rip off artists and replace their work with shoddy imitations. But I am enjoying these pockets of weirdness where I find them.
I enjoy asking DALLE-3 to label things. I learn so much!
Here I asked it to generate a labeled grid of flightless birds.
I think it's trying to do ostrich (a female apparently! unusual for a bird poster but I approve), an emu (definitely not an emu's head), a casowary (pretty good except for the TWO HEADS), penguin (with hilariously long legs), rhea (...what), and ...maybe a weka or a penguin?
Or this attempt:
As far as I can tell, it's the same group of attempted birds, with the possible addition of the dodo. In this set we have some birds with excellent head tufts, another two-headed cassowary, and one bird with creepy hands.
I also like this set. Some of them remind me of cats.
I asked ChatGPT (which was passing my requests to DALL-E3) what the unlabeled bird in the center was, and it replied that it was a penguin. I don't think it had any ability to label images it had generated, I think it just picked a likely answer based on what it knew the prompt had been.
DALL-E3's flightless birds aren't fit for purpose as scientific illustrations (or as much else, really), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like them. I like the ones with big chunky fluffy legs, the shaggy ones, and the ones with head tufts especially. I wonder if this is what the Mesozoic was like.
Meet Karen Jacobsen, a voiceover artist from Queensland Australia, who has one of the most recognisable voices in the world. As the original voice of GPS, she’s helped billions of us to reach our destination. Back in 2002, she recorded more than 50 hours of audio for the first ever GPS voice system, including 168 versions of the word “approximately”. Has she told you where to go? Recalculating.
Jacobsen articulately and succinctly explains how the sound engineers created the GPS voice and why they chose an Australian speaker for its basis: "because the Australian accent was considered the most pleasant English speaking accent to listen to." Don't react negatively to that until you hear how the engineers proceeded to work with the raw material they accumulated.
The fascinating account of another super famous voice that billions of people have interacted with during the last dozen plus years is entertainingly told here:
With a strong personality and a sense of humor, Siri and the voice behind her, give the story of voice acting and how Susan Bennett became the original voice of Siri. Susan and her voice talent were suddenly a persona on devices worldwide, thrusting her into accidental fame. Susan tells of how Siri was created and how she dealt with the fear of living up to the expectations of Siri.
I know many people who rely on Siri for countless decisions they make and information they seek. They treat her as a real person and are truly grateful for her assistance. I can hear it in their voices and see it from their demeanor.
I do not know how to use Siri or GPS, but I marvel when other interact meaningfully and usefully with them.
New Secret Knots comic, called “In the House of You”. It’s been a while! This comic is made possible thanks to the kind support of Patreon subscribers.
Today is the 9th of February. Time is flying and yet it feels like I’ve been here for a very long time. In spite of the fact that we are surviving it doesn’t mean we are strong, it doesn’t mean we are ok, it doesn’t mean we are coping well. It just means that in order to remain alive we have to make do with what we have. We could never have survived this far without clinging on to the hope that things will end one day and that we are going to return back to our homes and that this time will pass and will become a memory like the many hard times the Palestinians have been through.
A lot of things have been happening with me, especially as I’ve been trying to leave for a while - it’s no secret anymore. In spite of all the love I carry for my home and my city I’m finding it very hard to stay. People are really suffering and we are hearing their stories every day. I just heard a friend of ours in Rafah was taken out of the rubble alive, so that was good news. I still have to cope with a very difficult living situation which is very hard for humans and animals and everyone.
One of the things that happened recently was the creation of family WhatsApp groups. Families from Gaza are spread out all over the world - like my own family; part of it is in Spain, part of it is in Saudi Arabia, part of it is in Libya, another part is in Norway, another part is in Sweden, another part in Canada - and the list goes on and on. We could have lost contact with each other by the time the next generation grows up but now due to this war we are all connected with each other and we ask about each other and they call us whenever they can. The support I’m receiving from friends is also incredible and has a strong impact on my own mental health and wellbeing and therefore it impacts everyone around me in a positive manner. I don’t want anyone to underestimate how powerful it is to provide a good word or whatever kind of support they can because people here need it.
I have recently realized that the children here miss going to school. One of the members of the host family is 15 years old and although the house is so busy, crowded and loud, she takes the time to read from her school books and she keeps trying to remember what the situation was like before and what school was like. She told me that she misses school, she likes to have some private time alone and this is her way of spending her private time.
These days I can see the impact of the deteriorating health situation showing up in the form of insects, diarrhea and fever. Although relatively we are in a better situation than others. People are still hoping for a truce or a ceasefire - they are looking forward to that. However in Rafah I have noticed that military operations increased before they said they would publicly. This happened in Gaza City too - the Israelis had already started the ground military operations about a week before announcing it publicly. The same thing happened in Khan Younis and from my observation the same thing is happening here. Everyone is saying they are coming to Rafah soon and people have already started to flee to the middle area of the Gaza Strip. I don’t know if we should flee there because I have a responsibility - I have my father, my pets and the luggage and my car is not working. The first time it was relatively easy because the car was working but now that it’s so hard to find fuel I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it.
I don’t have a lot more to say - I feel like I can’t add anymore, partly because I don’t have the energy and partly because I have some ongoing personal issues. Maybe I’ll share them once they’re over. But I’m alive and I’m ok. I just hope that this ends soon, like everyone here does. Let’s see where things will take us and I’ll keep you informed for the next few days.
“In a world that often glorifies punctuality and values every minute of our day, it may seem counterintuitive to emphasize the importance of being late. However, there are moments when tardiness can carry its own significance and lessons, reminding us that life’s pace isn’t always a sprint, but sometimes a leisurely stroll.” That is the thinking behind Brutto’s adorable new wall clock, aptly titled BE LATE. It features a mid-century inspired “face” that gives you one time, Twelve, and nothing else, embracing the vibes of being late. I really enjoy the color palette they’ve used here, it feels both fresh and timeless. I imagine I’m going to be seeing a lot of this clock pop up on TikTok.
The week before last, Katie shared with me that article from last month, Who killed Google Reader? I’d read it before so I didn’t bother clicking through again, but we did end up chatting about RSS a bit1.
I ditched Google Reader several years before its untimely demise, but I can confirm “461 unread items” was a believable message.
Katie “abandoned feeds a few years ago” because they were “regularly ending up with 200+ unread items that felt overwhelming”.
Conversely: I think that dropping your feed reader because there’s too much to read is… solving the wrong problem.
About half way through editing this image I completely forgot what message I was trying to convey, but I figured I’d keep it anyway and let you come up with your own interpretation.
I think that he, like Katie, might be looking at his reader in a different way than I do mine.
At time of writing, I’ve got 567 unread items. And that’s fine.
RSS is not email!
I’ve been in the position that Katie and David describe: of feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unread items. And I know others have, too. So let me share something I’ve learned sooner:
There’s nothing special about reaching Inbox Zero in your feed reader.
It’s not noble nor enlightened to get to the bottom of your “unread” list.
Your 👏 feed 👏 reader 👏 is 👏 not 👏 an 👏 email 👏 client. 👏
The idea of Inbox Zero as applied to your email inbox is about productivity. Any message in your email might be something that requires urgent action, and you won’t know until you filter through and categorise .
But your RSS reader doesn’t (shouldn’t?) be there to add to your to-do list. Your RSS reader is a list of things you might like to read. In an ideal world, reaching “RSS Zero” would mean that you’ve seen everything on the Internet that you might enjoy. That’s not enlightened; that’s sad!
Google Reader understood this, although the word “congratulations” was misplaced.
Use RSS for joy
My RSS reader is a place of joy, never of stress. I’ve tried to boil down the principles that makes it so, and here they are:
Zero is not the target. The numbers are to inspire about how much there is “out there” for you, not to enumerate how much work need have to do.
Group your feeds by importance. Your feed reader probably lets you group (folder, tag…) your feeds, so you can easily check-in on what you care about and leave other feeds for a rainy day.2 This is good.
Don’t read every article. Your feed reader gives you the convenience of keeping content in one place, but you’re not obligated to read every single one. If something doesn’t interest you, mark it as read and move on. No judgement.
Keep things for later. Something you want to read, but not now? Find a way to “save for later” to get it out of your main feed so you. Don’t have to scroll past it every day! Star it or tag it3 or push it to your link-saving or note-taking app. I use a link shortener which then feeds back into my feed reader into a “for later” group!
Let topical content expire. Have topical/time-dependent feeds (general news media, some social media etc.)? Have reader “purge” unread articles after a time. I have my subscription to BBC News headlines expire after 5 days: if I’ve taken that long to read a headline, it might as well disappear.4
Use your feed reader deliberately. You don’t need popup notifications (a new article’s probably already up to an hour stale by the time it hits your reader). We’re all already slaves to notifications! Visit your reader when it suits you. I start and end every day in mine; most days I hit it again a couple of other times. I don’t need a notification: there’s always new content. The reader keeps track of what I’ve not looked at.
It’s not just about text. Don’t limit your feed reader to just text. Podcasts are nothing more than RSS feeds with attached audio files; you can keep track in your reader if you like. Most video platforms let you subscribe to a feed of new videos on a channel or playlist basis, so you can e.g. get notified about YouTube channel updates without having to fight with The Algorithm. Features like XPath Scraping in FreshRSS let you subscribe to services that don’t even have feeds: to watch the listings of dogs on local shelter websites when you’re looking to adopt, for example.
Do your reading in your reader. Your reader respects your preferences: colour scheme, font size, article ordering, etc. It doesn’t nag you with newsletter signup popups, cookie notices, or ads. Make the most of that. Some RSS feeds try to disincentivise this by providing only summary content, but a good feed reader can work around this for you, fetching actual content in the background.5
Use offline time to catch up on your reading. Some of the best readers support offline mode. I find this fantastic when I’m on an aeroplane, because I can catch up on all of the interesting articles I’d not had time to yet while grounded, and my reading will get synchronised when I touch down and disable flight mode.
Make your reader work foryou. A feed reader is a tool that works for you. If it’s causing you pain, switch to a different tool6, or reconfigure the one you’ve got. And if the way you find joy from RSS is different from me, that’s fine: this is a personal tool, and we don’t have to have the same answer.
2 If your feed reader doesn’t support any kind of grouping, get a better reader.
3 If your feed reader doesn’t support any kind of marking/favouriting/tagging of articles, get a better reader.
4 If your feed reader doesn’t support customisable expiry times… well that’s not too unusual, but you might want to consider getting a better reader.
5 FreshRSS calls the feature that fetches actual post content from the resulting page “Article CSS selector on original website”, which is a bit of a mouthful, but you can see what it’s doing. If your feed reader doesn’t support fetching full content… well, it’s probably not that big a deal, but it’s a good nice-to-have if you’re shopping around for a reader, in my opinion.
6 There’s so much choice in feed readers, and migrating between them is (usually) very easy, so everybody can find the best choice for them. Feedly, Inoreader, and The Old Reader are popular, free, and easy-to-use if you’re looking to get started. I prefer a selfhosted tool so I use the amazing FreshRSS (having migrated from Tiny Tiny RSS). Here’s some more tips on getting started. You might prefer a desktop or mobile tool, or even something exotic: part of the beauty of RSS feeds is they’re open and interoperable, so if for example you love using Slack, you can use Slack to push feed updates to you and get almost all the features you need to do everything in my list, including grouping (using channels) and saving for later (using Slackbot/”remind me about this”). Slack’s a perfectly acceptable feed reader for some people!
January 1st, 2024: The first comic of the new year! But it's not just a new comic, it's some NEW SITE UPDATES, including an on-site search engine! If you click "search" at the top you can try it out. Also, on January 1st there's going to be a new transcript button on the comic pages beneath the comic, so you've got that as an option too! This is all thanks to Jan Szejko who created a super cool transcript generator for Dinosaur Comics over the past while - and in so doing found a TON of little mistakes that had been lurking in the comics, sometimes for years. (Did you know I misspelled "Dromiceiomimus" a few times several years ago?? Well NOT ANYMORE!) So I want to sincerely (and publicly!) thank Jan for all their hard work here, and for the super slick code they produced. And the site is better because of them - thank you Janek! And have fun with the new search engine specifically for my talking dinosaur comic. :)
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here’s an RSS feed containing (only) these RSS tips!
