Here’s a fun interactive from NASA Landsat that lets you enter your name to see it spelled with satellite imagery. There are multiple images for each letter, so you get a new combination when you refresh.
I didn’t know NASA put out these kind of projects, but I like it. You can also download the images for specific letters.
All of my friends that work at wildlife rehab centers have had to untangle animals from this stuff, or had animals brought in that died in it. This is especially nasty for small owl species.
It actually bums me out that astrology has persisted through the years as the standard BS divinatory practice that people really buy into, when it so easily could have been ornithomancy instead.
We could’ve had hipster girls trying to predict the minutiae of your life using an intricate chart that details how many herons or crows you’ve seen in the past year. Instead of asking what’s your sign on dating apps people would be like how many birds did you see on your way to work today. I cannot stop thinking about what could have been.
“well this will break eventually but let's see how far I get”
63-year-old Dalton Ghetti, a carpenter in Connecticut by profession, has been creating his tiny graphite sculptures for some 39 years.
He uses three tools — a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife — to create his pieces.
He has never used a magnifying glass and has never sold a single work, preferring to give them away to his friends.
In an interview with Odd Stuff Magazine, he said, "I use the sewing needle to make holes or dig into the graphite.
I scratch and create lines and turn the graphite around slowly in my hand."
More: "The longest Dalton has spent on one piece was two and half years on a pencil with interlinking chains.
A standard figure will take several months."
He said: "The interlinking chains took the most effort and I was really pleased with it because it's so intricate people think it must be two pencils."
And: "When Dalton, from Connecticut, USA, first started he would become frustrated when a piece would break before being finished after he had spent months working on it."
He said: "It would drive me mad when I would be just a bit too heavy handed and the pencil’s tip would break."
"I would get very nervous sometimes, particularly when the piece was almost finished, and then I would make a mistake."
"I decided to change the way I thought about the work — when I started a new piece my attitude would be 'well this will break eventually but let's see how far I get.'"
"It helped me break fewer pencils, and although I still do break them, it's not as often."
Finally: "Dalton, who is originally from Brazil, has a box full of more than 100 sculptures that have broken while working on them that he affectionately calls 'the cemetery collection [below].'"
He said: "I have quite a few broken pieces so I decided to glue them on pins and into styrofoam for a display case. People might think it's weird I keep them but they're still interesting. I worked on them for months so they might be dead now but at one point I gave them life."
Stanley Tucci is America’s second husband who breathed new life into America as America was picking up the pieces after America’s divorce.
Kamala Harris is America’s cool aunt who gets called in the middle of the night to come to the rescue and pick America up because America is stuck at a keg party with a bunch of weird townies in the middle of a field and no ride home. And while she’ll be disappointed, she’ll be cool and not tell America’s parents.
Kathryn Hahn is America’s other cool aunt who would also come pick America up, but she will stay at the townie party for an hour and shoot some bottles off the hood of a Chevy Silverado.
Betty White is forever America’s favorite grandmother—the good one who tells you stories about getting zooted on quaaludes in the ’50s and not the one on the other side of the family who says “oriental” when describing people and not rugs.
Dolly Parton is America’s mom.
RuPaul is Mother.
Martha Stewart is America’s ex-wife, and honestly, everyone is getting along so much better now that everyone can just be themselves and stop pretending.
Bella Hadid is America’s girlfriend, and America wouldn’t make that up. It’s just that Bella has a busy travel schedule, so that’s why you’ve never seen them together.
Oprah is America’s boss at the best job it ever had.
Jeff Bezos is America’s boss at the worst job it ever had.
Anderson Cooper is America’s work BFF who always knows the office gossip.
Keanu Reeves is America’s childless uncle that America stays with when America’s parents go on a trip to rekindle the spark. He says “Sure, why not?” when America asks if it’s allowed to shoot a potato gun off the roof.
Elon Musk is America’s creepy uncle, and after seeing him, America had a nightmare about his skin slithering off his body in one splotchy piece and crawling through the gap under the door to come get America, and can America sleep in Mom and Dad’s bed tonight?
Macaulay Culkin is America’s cousin who America hasn’t seen much of since childhood.
Jennifer Coolidge is America’s rich widow.
Melania Trump is America’s stepmother who married into the family when America was already an adult and out of the house. So America never really formed a meaningful bond with her. She almost never comes to dinner, and when she does, she eats something strange and off-putting like two small pickled onions.
Bill Murray is America’s strange older guy who shows up at the college party and no one is sure who he is or how he got there, but he brought weed so America lets him stay.
Harry Styles is America’s fling from America’s study abroad year.
Taylor Swift is America’s older brother’s super popular girlfriend who is only dating America’s brother to use America’s family pool over the summer.
Gwyneth Paltrow is America’s ice-cold prom queen who was too cool to give America the time of day back then, but well, well, well, look who is reaching out to America on Facebook because she’s selling pseudoscience dietary supplements now.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is America’s soccer coach with a heart of gold who is happy to stay behind after practice to listen when America is having trouble at home.
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.
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