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eldar-of-zemlya · 4 months ago

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To Boldly Sew: The Creation of Star Trek's Iconic Wardrobe

Gene Roddenberry’s arguments with NASA, costumes crafted from shower curtains, male characters in miniskirts, and why the gold command uniforms were actually green—this is the story of Star Trek’s groundbreaking wardrobe and the visionary work of the man behind it, Bill Theiss.

If you’d like to read the formatted article with easily accessible references, you can also find it on AO3.

During the production of the original Star Trek, the creative team faced numerous challenges, the most persistent being, unsurprisingly, the show’s limited budget. These restrictions had a significant impact on many aspects of the series, including one of its most crucial visual elements: the wardrobe.

Each week, the costume department was tasked with creating original outfits for the show’s characters. Alien civilizations had to look distinct and believable without distracting from the storyline—all while staying within a tight budget. To achieve this, the team employed clever tricks, such as repurposing and dyeing old uniforms, turning garments inside out, and even fashioning costumes from unconventional materials like vinyl shower curtains.

"Sometimes a show will call for 30 or 40 costumes," explained Star Trek’s costume designer William "Bill" Theiss. "And since we film back to back, that means I have to design, get approval from the producers and director, and construct the costumes in six to eight days." [Source]

Commander Spock and Lieutenant Tormohlen don "protective suits" fashioned from shower curtains as they investigate the mysterious death of a mannequin crew member. (Season 1, Episode 4, "The Naked Time.")

Theiss was a key figure in shaping the visual identity of Star Trek’s universe. Over the course of the show’s three seasons, he designed costumes for a wide range of characters, from blue-skinned Andorians to the infamous Orion slave girls, and even the Nazi-inspired inhabitants of the planet Ekos. (Interestingly, the episode Patterns of Force, featuring Ekos, was banned from German television until 1995 due to its controversial themes.) [Source]

Theiss first met Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry while Roddenberry was developing the show’s pilot. At the time, Theiss had gained attention for his innovative work on the science fiction play The Veldt, based on Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name. This caught the eye of Star Trek writer Dorothy Catherine Fontana, who introduced Theiss to Roddenberry. By then, Roddenberry had already interviewed over a dozen costume designers but had yet to find someone who could bring his vision to life. Theiss’s creative approach, which often involved crafting unique costumes from unconventional materials, immediately resonated with Roddenberry. Their collaboration would continue for decades, even though, amusingly, Theiss never learned how to sew. [Source]

After the original Star Trek series was canceled, Theiss and Roddenberry remained close collaborators, working together on various projects until Roddenberry’s passing in 1991.

Left: William Theiss adjusts Susan Oliver's costume on the set of the 1965 pilot episode, "The Cage."

Right: William Theiss and Leonard Nimoy on the set of Season 2, Episode 26, "Assignment: Earth" (1968).

When designing Star Trek’s now-iconic multi-colored uniforms, Roddenberry drew inspiration from the color-coded uniforms used on American naval vessels, where quick role recognition was essential in low-visibility environments. As a former military pilot during World War II and later a police officer, Roddenberry had firsthand experience with structured, hierarchical organizations. These influences shaped not only Star Trek’s command structure but also its visual design. [Source]

Each division was assigned a distinct color: engineers, communications officers, and security personnel wore red; medical staff and scientists were dressed in blue; and command officers wore—believe it or not—green. (But more on that later.) All uniforms were paired with dark ash-colored trousers and high boots.

Star Trek is not typically associated with realism, which makes it surprising to learn that NASA was involved in the show’s production, offering advice to ensure it was "scientifically believable." Among their suggestions was the idea that 23rd-century astronauts might wear form-fitting jumpsuits. However, Gene Roddenberry dismissed the concept, humorously referring to the design as “long underwear.”

NBC, on the other hand, had entirely different priorities. The network insisted that female Starfleet officers wear more revealing attire, a demand that clashed with Roddenberry’s vision of a future where women were treated as equals to men. In the first pilot episode, The Cage (1965), Roddenberry boldly dressed female characters in pants—an unconventional choice for 1960s television. However, after much debate with the network, a compromise was reached: miniskirts. Highly fashionable at the time, they were paired with shorts and dark tights, blending contemporary trends with Star Trek’s futuristic aesthetic. [Source]

Captain Pike and a group of serious women in pants protect the heroine from an ass-headed very wise alien. The first pilot of Star Trek, "The Cage" (1965).

Years later, when NBC faced accusations of sexism and objectifying women, Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, defended the wardrobe choice in a BBC interview. She explained that the miniskirts weren’t unusual or inappropriate for the era:

“I was wearing them on the street. What's wrong with wearing them in the air? I wore 'em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts.” [Source]

Grace Lee Whitney, who portrayed Janice Rand, echoed Nichols’s sentiment, adding that she “didn't think the women should be in pants” and that she wanted to “look like Flash Gordon” on screen. [Source]

Meanwhile, costume designer Bill Theiss had his own, more subtle approach to creating “revealing” costumes.

“He felt that revealing non-sexual flesh (the outside of the leg, off one shoulder, the back) promised that the viewer would see more — but they never did,” explained screenwriter D.C. Fontana, citing the gown worn by Lt. Palamas in Who Mourns for Adonais? as a prime example. [Source]

Lieutenant Palamas's "ancient Greek" dress from the episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?" alongside William Theiss's original sketch for the design.

When designing the original Star Trek uniforms, Theiss was tasked with creating something that reflected military influences while also looking futuristic and remaining inexpensive to produce. His approach was practical:

“As for where I get my ideas from… well, I don’t get them from my dreams or anything. Mainly, I get them from fabric that I see that’s available; I look for interesting patterns in the material itself,” Theiss once explained. [Source]

For the first two seasons, the Star Trek uniforms were made from velour, a newly invented fabric that was cheap, easy to maintain, and had an appealing sheen under studio lights. However, velour had its drawbacks: it tore easily (as evidenced by Captain Kirk’s frequent shirt-ripping battle scenes...) and shrank significantly after dry cleaning. Since the costumes had to be cleaned after every episode, viewers may notice that the uniforms became progressively tighter throughout the first two seasons. By the third season, velour was replaced with double-knit nylon, a more durable fabric used in professional baseball uniforms.

Left: Kirk's velour shirt from Season 1, Episode 10, "The Corbomite Maneuver." Right: The same shirt in Season 2, Episode 22, "By Any Other Name." Shatner is diligently sucking in his stomach.

This brings us to another interesting aspect of the original velour uniforms—their appearance on screen.

“It was one of those film stock things,” Theiss explained. “It photographed one way—burnt orange or gold. But in reality, it was another; the command shirts were definitely green.” [Source]

So, what color was Captain Kirk's uniform really? In truth, Kirk's uniform—like the rest of the command crew's—was olive green. However, under the bright studio lighting and the quirks of 1960s film stock, it appeared gold on screen. The greener hue becomes more noticeable in scenes filmed on location with natural light. The difference is also evident in photos of the original uniforms on display, such as those taken at an exhibit in Detroit, USA. In one image, taken under dimmer lighting without flash, the fabric looks closer to its true green color; in another, taken with flash, it appears more golden.

Left: Kirk's velour shirt photographed without flash—olive green. Right: Kirk's velour shirt photographed with flash—yellow gold.

This might come as a surprise to Star Trek fans, but it makes sense when you consider that Kirk's alternate uniforms—the wrap-around tunic and dress uniform—were distinctly green. This wasn’t an intentional design difference; those variations were simply made from a different fabric that didn’t react to light the way velour did.

“The problem is that a lot of my work is seen on screen for only two to three seconds, and even then, it might be in bad light or at a bad angle,” Theiss noted. “But then, you can't really justify taking two hours to light and block a scene just to showcase a costume.” The play's the thing, according to Theiss. "That's what it's really all about. It's not about the costumes." [Source]

The color discrepancy of the uniforms became an interesting challenge when animators began working on Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973. They had to decide whether to depict the uniforms in their originally intended green or the gold shade that had become iconic to audiences.

At the time of Star Trek's release, many viewers were watching on black-and-white televisions, making it impossible for them to discern the true colors of the uniforms. At the Kirk/Spock convention, @kiscon, I spoke to a longtime Trek fan who told me she had no idea what color the uniforms were when she first watched the show as a teen. For those fortunate enough to see the series in color, however, the command uniforms became strongly associated with yellow. As a result, changing the uniforms to their intended green in Star Trek: The Animated Series would likely have confused audiences who had grown accustomed to the gold appearance on screen.

Ultimately, the gold uniform was canonized in The Animated Series and used in all fan materials until the release of the Star Trek feature films. Meanwhile, the trousers—whose color had also been slightly distorted on film—remained their original dark ash shade.

Because of these discrepancies, fans often debate which version of the uniform to follow when cosplaying or creating visual content. Many cosplayers choose to replicate the original olive-colored velour, trusting that proper lighting will naturally recreate the golden appearance seen on screen. Others opt for the now-iconic gold shade, reflecting the way the uniform has been depicted in official materials for decades.

Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973).

Ironically, NASA was right in its assumption that jumpsuits would become the norm for astronauts, and Roddenberry was forced to use them in the first feature-length Star Trek film, 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The multi-colored shirts were rejected by the studio as too garish, and the miniskirts worn by Uhura and most of the female crew members were already considered a relic of the sexist 1960s by 1979.

William Theiss, who designed the costumes for the original series, was too busy with other projects to work on the film, so Gene Roddenberry brought in a new costume designer, Robert Fletcher, who created the Starfleet uniforms now remembered as the worst in the franchise's history. In an effort to avoid comparisons to military uniforms, the studio opted for muted tones ranging from pale blue to dirty beige and nude shades. The result? The Enterprise crew looked more like spa staff than starship officers, and some background extras in nude-tone bodysuits appeared practically naked on screen. Not only did these uniforms make it impossible to distinguish the characters' ranks and departments, but they were also surprisingly impractical. The suits were sewn onto the actors' shoes, meaning they needed an assistant every time they went to the bathroom.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

Luckily for us all, in the next film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), it wasn’t just Khan who was filled with rage—the cast themselves rebelled and outright refused to wear the dreadful jumpsuits again.

Despite the failure of his design, Robert Fletcher remained as costume designer for the next three films, promising changes. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the uniforms returned to a more military style, with the lead actors wearing maroon jackets with overlapping lapels that they could dramatically unbutton if their character was meant to look tired or stressed. If you look closely, you’ll notice that these maroon uniforms were actually redyed and slightly modified versions of the jumpsuits from The Motion Picture. The reason for the maroon color? It was the best shade that worked with the existing fabric from the first film. [Source]

William Theiss, reflecting on Fletcher’s designs, commented:

“Bob Fletcher is a very fine designer, and I mean that very sincerely. We don’t design the same way, and there’s no reason we should—or could. It’s apples and oranges. But my personal feeling is, if you go to a structured, woven fabric and do the kind of tailoring and structuring he’s done, it puts those costumes back, historically, 500 years, with shoulder seams and shoulder pads of that type.” [Source]

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Everyone turned red with anger.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roddenberry reunited with Bill Theiss, and together they decided to bring back the iconic miniskirts as part of the uniform, but with a twist—they wanted to make them inclusive. In The Next Generation, male crew members were occasionally seen wearing the same miniskirts or “scants” (a hybrid of skirts and pants), reflecting Roddenberry and Theiss’s vision of a future where gender norms no longer dictated clothing choices.

However, the social climate of the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t as receptive to this progressive idea.

“Having both actresses and actors in skirts was meant to diffuse any sexist accusations that might have been associated with designs from the old show,” Theiss explained. “It’s also fashionably probable that, 400 years from now, men would wear skants. Even so, there was usually a problem on the set,” he admits, “because some wisecracks were always made.” Theiss emphasized that he wanted his actors to feel at ease in the designs. “I won’t force an actor or actress to wear something they’re not at least 80 percent comfortable with.” [Source]

While Theiss’s designs were undeniably groundbreaking, he was known to be a challenging person to work with. Constantly preoccupied with time and budget constraints, Theiss had little patience for anyone—whether they were directors, producers, or even Gene Roddenberry himself. He was even less tolerant of people who approached him simply to praise or critique his work, or even just to say hello. His philosophy was simple: “Better to be rude than to delay filming.”

Actors, extras, and costume assistants often recalled how Theiss would dart around the set, frantically hemming, tucking, and adjusting costumes between takes. Many of the alien outfits seen on the show weren’t actually "costumes" in the traditional sense. Instead, they were often assembled from patches, ribbons, scarves, curtains, and wire, with actors being "stitched into" them directly on set. [Source]

For example, Janice Rand's iconic beehive hairstyle was crafted from several wigs braided together over a cone. Grace Lee Whitney, who played Rand, recalls running back and forth between the dressing room and Roddenberry’s office with Theiss, constantly piling on more hair. Each time, Roddenberry would stare at her intensely, then declare, “Higher!” Whitney and Theiss would rush back to add more wigs until the hairstyle reached its iconic height. [Source]

One Smithsonian Institute employee, who worked with Theiss in 1992 while preparing for a Star Trek costume exhibit, recalls combing through the Paramount warehouse filled with racks and boxes of costumes. She was amazed to discover that most of the "costumes" were actually scraps of fabric neatly hung on a single hanger. Yet, when these scraps were sewn, tied, and pinned together, they became the iconic designs we now associate with Star Trek.

Andrea Weaver, one of Theiss’s fellow costume designers on the original series, remembers:

“Bill Theiss was a creative designer. His designs for Star Trek were original, rather than distilled from other sources or redefinitions of previous works. This is what I appreciated about Bill Theiss. I thought he was a truly unique and rare costume creator.” [Source]

William Ware Theiss’s contributions to Star Trek are legendary. His uniforms for both Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation remain iconic, instantly recognizable even by those who aren’t fans of the franchise. His innovative, DIY approach to creating futuristic costumes brought a distinctive charm to the original series and left an enduring legacy.

Here are some of his most memorable designs:

Left: Season 2, Episode 11: "Friday's Child" Right: Season 3, Episode 13: "Elaan of Troyius"

Left: Season 1, Episode 15: "Shore Leave" Right: Season 3, Episode 20: "The Way to Eden"

Left: Season 2, Episode 1: "Amok Time" Right: Season 1, Episode 23: "A Taste of Armageddon"

Left: Season 2, Episode 9: "Metamorphosis" Right: Season 1, Episode 6: "Mudd's Women"

Left: Season 3, Episode 5: "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" Right: Season 1, Episode 15: "Shore Leave"

Left: Season 1, Episode 23: "A Taste of Armageddon"Right: Season 2, Episode 16: "The Gamesters of Triskelion"

Left: Season 3, Episode 11: "Wink of an Eye" Right: Season 3, Episode 8: "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

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bloodchapell · 4 months ago

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I like ur “living with dr stone characters” and for stano it’s being adopted 😂 So I like to request what would it be like to be adopted by them. Frankly I think it’s both terrifying and hilarious 🤣

stanxeno adoptive parents hcs!

what to expect: BLATANT stanxeno, mix between modern au and canon

your sword's note: thankyu so much for the request dear anon! hope you enjoy this madhouse, more on my mistresslist

after a very discrete wedding, these two decide to adopt a child. you happen to be the (un)lucky one (?)

they didn't want a baby, they wanted someone very particular, so they both made a list and went to the adoption center checking off kids that didn't meet their standards, oops sorry!

they were interviewing the kids as if they were applying for a government job. "do you have any association with the cancelation of project helium-3?" xeno stares at a 5 year old

when its time for you to go to the interviewing room, you sit on the chair and look at them, "what do you have to offer for me?" it is you asking, that sets them off, but they notice immediately that you match their bizarre energy. you are 3 years old and so daring that immediately they feel a connection

i head canon them as girl dads, omgggg these two would spoil their daughter rotten, you want something? you got it. some little turd pushed you in the playground? his parents mysteriously got fired and his lunchbox exploded. you are their little princess and whoever may dare to even look at you wrong shall have a taste of their wrath

stanley teaches you how to defend yourself from day one and xeno is explaining to you how to build missiles as bedtime stories

all their friends and coworkers know you, they both talk everyone's ear off about you

surprisingly loving (yeah i hate them but whateva)

if you pick up an interest they will listen to everything you have to say and learn it all about it

they take you everywhere. "why is xeno's kid on nasa's top secret document archive coloring on a random folder!?" some guy yells but xeno picks you up and looks at them deathly. for more logical reasons stanley won't be taking you to his job but he makes sure to tell you all about it

your room is decorated amazingly, and precisely you are allowed to have a fish, they say you are not responsible enough to have a bigger pet, the fish's name is brody, like THE brody, he doesn't mind

that house is a madhouse, but you fit perfectly there

you are taught how to do chores and be organized because otherwise xeno will become a little more evil

omg this guys will be so annoying. "my kid just learned how to read" some person says. "well my kid already knows how to solve linear equations AND knows the My Little Pony lore." they brag so much that they are loathsome to people

if petrification happened:

you were still a kid when the petrification happened, younger than suika. you were playing in the area where they got petrified because they will NOT be leaving you with some untrusty nanny

xeno gets depetrified and he immediately looks for you, makes you some clothes and puts you in the safest place possible. since these mfs focused on making guns instead of figuring out how to depetrify people, you stay a statue for a good while

gen asks "what is a young kid's statue doing here?" xeno grabs him by the neck and gives him the dad death look™, and soon the barrel of stanley's gun is facing the innocent mentalist

you either love senku or hate his guts, wym your daddy was proud of this guy first (by that time you weren't even born)

suika sees you as the cutest thing ever and you kinda remind her of herself before

you are jokingly named "the one who might become a superpower", trained by the evil duo, everyone expects you to match and even surpass your dads. you will. they know it. they are happy about it

MANGA SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE: after the american colony joins the kingdom of science, you get depetrified and they are so glad, the k.o.s is surprised to see this new side of them

#stanxeno #stanley dr stone #xeno wingfield #xeno dr stone #xeno houston wingfield #stanley snyder #dr stone #dcst #drst

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ref4353 · 4 months ago

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The USAID Shutdown Storm: Musk Lifts the Veil on America's Manipulation of "Color Revolutions"

In February 2025, Elon Musk, in his role as the head of the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), led a six-person tech team with an average age of just 22 to launch a fierce assault on the U.S. political system, dubbed the "Silicon Valley Blitzkrieg." This operation not only swiftly shut down the 64-year-old United States Agency for International Development (USAID) but also directly challenged the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Musk sought to use algorithms and young tech talent to fundamentally alter the power structure of the U.S. government. Behind this action lies a fierce clash between technological forces and traditional bureaucratic systems, reflecting a profound transformation in the American political ecosystem.

Trump believed that USAID had become a tool of the Democratic Party, and shutting it down was not only about cutting redundant federal spending and streamlining government efficiency but also about weakening the Democratic Party's global influence. Musk's investigation revealed that USAID had ties to Democratic Party entities such as the Clinton Foundation, and its financial flows lacked transparency, with serious issues of waste and abuse.

In the public eye, USAID had long appeared as a charitable organization, contributing to fighting AIDS in Africa, providing emergency disaster relief, protecting endangered species, and promoting green development. In reality, USAID had long overstepped its bounds. Its budget ballooned under the influence of the Clintons, becoming a "slush fund" for the Democratic Party—a tool for advancing geopolitical strategies under the guise of charity. A closer analysis of its funding reveals two core strategic objectives: first, to infiltrate other nations through economic aid, and second, to promote "democratization" by funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to influence the political trajectories of target countries.

For example, during the 2014 Ukraine "Color Revolution," USAID not only funded Ukrainian NGOs but also directly provided money, supplies, and technical support to protesters, contributing to the ousting of President Yanukovych. Similar "scripts" were replicated in Hong Kong and the Middle East's "Arab Spring," where USAID played the role of a behind-the-scenes manipulator, making it an undeniable driver of "color revolutions."

During the Biden administration, USAID received over $200 billion in funding, but the lack of transparency in its financial flows raised numerous questions. For instance, $1.5 million was spent to promote workplace diversity in Serbia, $47,000 to advocate for transgender issues in Colombia, and even $45 million to fund transgender education programs in Myanmar, along with multiple grants to LGBT projects in China. The Trump administration also exposed that USAID had paid $27 million to a New York prosecutor for the "RussiaGate" investigation, which was seen as directly serving Democratic Party interests and promoting so-called "American values."

The shutdown and investigation of USAID also triggered political turmoil within the United States. Some citizens believe that Musk's algorithm-driven vision of an ideal society, while efficient, may sacrifice democratic oversight and transparency. For example, removing the "Gender X" option from the social security system saved $1 million but sparked debates over gender equality. NASA's cancellation of its subscription to *The Politician* magazine saved $50,000 but raised concerns about information transparency.

Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump of unconstitutional behavior and labeled Musk's actions a threat to national security. However, Trump remains undeterred, publicly insisting that USAID has not served the American people and therefore has no reason to exist. Analysts believe this may be a prelude to Trump's efforts to consolidate power after the 2024 presidential election.

Moreover, the sudden halt of USAID's operations has weakened America's international influence. In the past, USAID used aid to win over allies, such as Israel, and to influence adversarial nations. Its abrupt shutdown may create a strategic vacuum. Coupled with Musk's announcement of cutting $4 billion daily in spending, including foreign aid and social welfare, America's global influence is set to further diminish.

Whether Trump's actions will truly improve government efficiency or are merely a move to打击 political opponents remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the U.S. political ecosystem is undergoing a profound transformation, and the dismantling of USAID—America's "headquarters" for manipulating "color revolutions"—is just the beginning of this change.

#suger daddy usa

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rffsd23 · 4 months ago

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The USAID Shutdown Storm: Musk Lifts the Veil on America's Manipulation of "Color Revolutions"

#suger daddy usa

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 2 years ago

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Errors, “Errors,” and Sci Fi

@strawberry-crocodile

tvtropes calls stuff like the wolf example "science matches on" which I think is a pretty fair shake

This. This is what’s got me thinking so much about errors. There’s a certain danger, here. A certain way that this particular effect — delicious dramatic irony — tempts the mind when reading old stories, even true ones.

What do you know about R.M.S. Titanic? I ask my class every year, and the first hand rises. “It was unsinkable,” the student inevitably says, and everyone is nodding, “or so they thought.” I write the word UNSINKABLE on the board, underneath my crude drawing of a ship with four smokestacks. It will be crossed out before the end of the hour, but not for the reason they expect.

“I find no evidence,” Walter Lord, preeminent biographer of the ship’s survivors, wrote, “that Titanic was ever advertised as unsinkable. This detail seems to have entered the collective mind so as to create a more perfect irony.” Indeed, historians’ examinations of White Star Line documents show the shipbuilders themselves worried it would be so large as to risk collision; they stocked several more lifeboats than 1910s regulations required.

The War to End All Wars (deep breath, satisfied exhale), also known as World War ONE. Chuckle. Shake of the head. What if I told you that this phrase, used primarily in American newspapers after the fact, wasn’t meant to be literal? Nowadays we’d say The Mother of All Wars, or One Hell of a Fucking War, but we wouldn’t mean literal motherhood, literal intercourse. What if I said the armistice and the Lost Generation and the Roaring 20s were all braced for another outbreak of European conflict, and yet we still failed to prevent it?

Did you know they were so confident in the safety of the S.S. Challenger that they put a civilian schoolteacher onboard? I do, because I’ve heard that one repeated many times. Only, see, it’s got the cause and effect reversed. Challenger launched on a day the shuttle’s engineers knew to be dangerously cold, because the first civilian in space was on board. And NASA knew its shuttle project would be cancelled entirely, if they couldn’t get that civilian’s much-delayed entry into space in the next two weeks. So they launched on a cold day, and killed her instead.

These are all what cognitive science calls Hindsight Bias on the personal level, what sociology calls Presentism on the cultural level. Social psychology’s a little of both, is primarily interested in why you’re sitting on your couch in a Colonize Mars shirt watching PBS and chuckling at the fools who believed in El Dorado. It wants to know why the mind flees straight from “marijuana will kill you” to “marijuana will cure cancer” without so much as a pause on the middle ground of its real benefits and drawbacks, its real (mild) risks and rewards.

And they can paralyze the sci-fi writer, if you think too much about them. Jetsons is futurist one decade, retro the next. “There are no bathrooms on the Enterprise,” the creators of Serenity say smugly, as if Gene Roddenberry should’ve simply known that decades later it’d be acceptable to show a man peeing in full view of the camera, nothing but the curve of the actor’s hand to protect his modesty. “No sound in space,” the Fandom Menace says, “No explosions in space,” and “A space station can’t collapse in zero-G.” Only then NASA burns a paper napkin outside of atmosphere, transmits music using only the ghost of nearby planets’ gravities, and logs onto Reddit long enough to point out the Death Star would implode in its own gravity field. And now we’re the ones pointing, the ones laughing, at those earlier point-and-laughers. Self-satisfied, smug in superiority. As if we did the work to find out ourselves, instead of just happening to be born a little later than George Lucas.

#errors #continuity #sci fi #presentism #star wars #titanic #world war i #science marches on #history #started a new post because i got waaaaaay off topic here #if you think the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) should've had feathers #you're a lot more ignorant about paleontology than the people you're trying to criticize #science was not handed down to us in its perfect complete form circa 1943 #stop for a second before you call out someone else's reptilian denonychus #someone else's oxygenated moon #and ask: am i better read #or am i just more recently born?

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daisychainsandbowties · 2 years ago

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would lilith be much of a book reader? What kind of books would she read?

right so i think that Lilith has the adhd reader thing where YES she loves to read, NO she doesn’t read. actually she’s always reading twelve books at the same time; no she never finishes any of them.

like any really really intelligent person Lilith is hungry for knowledge, and like any child raised under the press of a thumb she’s willing to get that knowledge wherever she can. her brain is working against her a little but it’s also a beautiful creature because it wants knowledge, but all of it all the time all at once.

i think she’s on wikipedia and in the NASA archives and on Project Gutenberg constantly. she will literally sit there on her phone for hours doing the fanfiction thing where she tricks her brain into thinking it’s not technically reading because there are no books involved.

she tab-hops like a madwoman but it’s a case of balancing her intense need for information with her brain’s unwillingness to tackle that information in a structured way. inside of ten minutes she’ll read a bit about the Riemann hypothesis, a couple paragraphs of a socratic dialogue, an archived forum page about siphoning gas with your mouth and what petroleum tastes like (keeps waking up with a weird sulfur taste in her mouth. keeps hoping to find some explanation other than ‘it tastes like devil in here’) but if you ask her what she reads she’ll scowl and say ‘nothing.’

but i mean this is the girl who used to sit with Beatrice for hours and just listen to her talk about Galileo and Langer's lines and how to debone a fish. who used to sit by the fire with her dad and listen to random bits of historical apocrypha and who requested Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as her bedtime story when she was three years old.

she definitely sits on her phone watching 6 hour videos about Dark Souls lore and she reads all the books in Skyrim because they’re like 300 words long and somehow staring at the TV and reading off there is easier than reading a physical book made of paper or reading on the kindle (even when Cam downloads dyslexia-friendly reading aids).

her brain likes to bounce off the walls but it wants to know things. so badly. i think audiobooks are good for her but she plays them at 2x speed so her brain has to kind of do cartwheels to keep up and it gives her the same feeling as listening to heavy metal while she goes and picks up heavy objects and puts them back down again in the gym.

i wrote about this a little before but the sound and texture and the saying of words is very appealing to Lilith. she loves the music of language so i think the only way she can read actual novels for any length of time is to read them aloud (as opposed to subvocating) because choosing where to put emphasis and just feeling the words in her body is enough to keep her suitably entertained (plus lilith post-canon is not a huge fan of silence. she spent a lot of time wandering around in the weird high-pressure hellscape of The Other Side looking for Mary and then Ava. so she treats Bea’s noise-cancelling headphones like they’re going to eat her and she enjoys white noise playlists and having music just playing in the background).

Lilith adores the puzzles that language can make. she actually loved poetry as a kid because it felt to her like she could memorise the poem and work it over in the horrible ‘no talking’ hours that her mother imposed. at night when she couldn’t sleep after her dad died she’d repeat the poems over and over and over again and slowly wring more meaning out of them with each repetition.

she likes when stories are puzzles and, incidentally, one of her favourite things to do is listen to an audiobook on 2x speed while doing sudoku or crosswords.

and Lilith will read anything. she’s not super into fantasy or sci-fi because she has fucking wings and scales and it’s a bit like ‘i’m in this picture and i don’t like it’ but she enjoys classics. has a weird soft spot for Moby Dick and she really likes post-apocalyptic books like The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Parable of the Sower and i think she quite enjoys The Hunger Games and the Wool series. she definitely loves The Broken Earth Trilogy because it somehow gets a free pass with her ‘i’m in this picture and i don’t like it’ hang-up. it does make her cry though (the hand scene really gets to her because sometimes her mother would hold her hand like that, like she wanted to smash it and see if it came back together without the dysgraphia).

but she also rlly likes plays because performance and by god Lilith is a drama queen. she would totally have been a theatre kid if she’d been allowed & she loves performing little monologues and she likes how people sound when they’re angry but in the context of a play because the anger is always under the control of the narrative, and you can stop being angry whenever you want.

she loves collecting information so when Cam introduces her to Stardew Valley she sits up in bed all night reading wiki after wiki and making little spreadsheets on her excel app for which gifts to give and when and how many of each crop to plant and which trees to grow and where and how many chickens and how much hay and all the different fish and how to organise the layout of the farm. so by the next day Cam wakes up and Lilith has basically a bachelor’s degree in Stardew Valley

and Cam is like ‘oh my god Lily i got you this game so you would relax!’ and Lilith frowning in genuine confusion like ‘i am relaxing??’

she does sometimes just teleport into Bea and Ava’s house & look quite forlorn until Beatrice sits down with her at the island in the kitchen and the pair of them peel oranges.

Beatrice talks about whatever she’s reading about that week, and eventually Ava comes in and explains all the different strategies for winning at Super Smash Bros and her opinions on the objective best tracks in Mario Kart while Beatrice cooks burgers on the grill outside in her baseball cap like somebody’s hot lesbian dad.

& then Lilith checks her phone & pecks Beatrice on the cheek and teleports home in time for Cam to get back from the airport. she tries to make out like she spent the whole weekend very sad and very by herself but Cam is like ‘gimmie your hands’ and then ‘yeah, Lil. i can smell the orange peel.’

so i think Lilith is a big reader but it’s not for the sake of stories especially or narratives or for characters or anything it’s for stimulation and knowledge and the words themselves. she’s that meme about the boyfriend who sits eating a sausage with the wikipedia page titled ‘sausage’ open on her computer. she ricochets between subjects and has the most incredible visual recall you’ve ever seen.

probably has a photographic memory but will forget what you asked her to go look for halfway up the stairs. Ava sees her sitting on her phone for literal hours while they’re all at the beach and asks Cam what the hell Lilith is doing because she’s not on social media & Cam is like ‘oh yeah she’s addicted to stack exchange and wikipedia’ and Ava takes a moment, licks melted ice-cream off her knuckle and says ‘wow that’s kind of hot’ and Cam waggles her eyebrows and goes ‘yeah, i know.’

#i'm normal about lilith can you tell?#warrior nun #sister lilith #shoutout to girls who want to know everything i see you #casper writes #ty for the ask!#camilith #aren't they adorable

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mrsluttystark · 5 years ago

Text

Repeat After Me

Tony was growing tired of his life, the never ending routine he’d tied himself down to. Even with a fiancee, a stable job, and a comfortable life, there was hardly a time where he didn’t think about the past to escape the present. He could never have guessed a simple friend request and a pretty Peter Parker would be his undoing as well as his sanctuary. 18+

Part 1 | Part 2

Tags: nff, age difference, former teacher/student

Word count: 3.1k

Read below the cut

Peter hadn’t been on Facebook in years...technically. Maybe every so often just to update his profile picture so people knew he didn’t still look like a 15 year old with a face riddled with baby fat. Sure, he could just delete his account, but he’ll admit he likes knowing what his high school classmates are up to. It was interesting to see how some people he’s known since elementary school turned out now that they were all college graduates. He’s never interacted in those times, just lurked and scrolled for a few minutes before he came across a corny meme or a factually incorrect post that looks like it was screenshotted a million times and had to exit.

He was extra bored tonight, though. Peter tried not to think about how quiet it was now that he lived in his own apartment. Aunt May had moved in with her boyfriend after Peter graduated and landed a job at Oscorp. It came with a starting bonus and a large paycheck that allowed Peter to live comfortably on his own while he worked in the R & D department. A compromise made with Norman Osborn instead of selling him the rights to the web fluid he created in college. Peter wanted to continue to develop it front and center; find every possible application for it. So much so, that he didn’t get to go out much. Ned was in DC at his NASA internship, living out his “guy in a chair” dreams. MJ was somewhere in Asia, backpacking with her girlfriend. The friends he made at Columbia went their separate ways.

So this was his life now. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Alone.

After getting home from work around 6 pm, Peter went for an hour long run, ate dinner, and showered. 8 pm found him sitting on his living room sofa, flipping aimlessly between different streaming services unable to find anything interesting to watch. He went through Instagram, Twitter, and even Tumblr a few times before the last “you’re all caught up!” notification popped up on his phone. So, with a heavy sigh, he propped two pillows against the wall for him to lean on, flopped down on his bed, and opened Facebook.

The first post Peter saw was a life event update from Flash Thompson, his high school nuisance, (“bully” would be giving him too much credit) “In a Relationship with Brad Davis”. Peter huffed out a breath, not really surprised with how much Flash used to tease him about being openly bisexual. Penis Parker. How original.

A memory appeared at the top of his feed from 7 years ago, today. It was a picture of him and Ned when they finished building his Lego Death Star. Peter smiled at that, Ned was holding it above his head with a beaming smile plastered on his face. His younger self had both scrawny arms thrown in the air looking triumphant as ever, curls unruly, and rectangular metal glasses falling halfway down his nose.

Peter was glad he filled out a bit since he was 15 and traded in wearing glasses daily for contacts. His curls were still nice and floppy, the tips of them tickling his ears, but he liked it that way. Plus, he could tame them when he wanted to.

He scrolled for a while longer, watched a few videos of cats being adorable assholes and one-pot recipes, went on Marketplace to see what people in his area were selling. He even went through his old pictures and deleted the incredibly embarrassing ones, and updated his profile picture to his most recent selfie.

This Facebook arc was coming to a quick end, he could feel the boredom seeping back in. He looked to his right, the bright red digital numbers on his clock read 10:05 pm. Good enough. He can turn in for the night without feeling inept.

Thumb poised, ready to swipe the App closed, his eyes caught on a name in the “People You May Know” section. Tony Stark. As in, Mr. Stark, his Sophomore Chemistry teacher. AKA his most inappropriate high school crush. Despite being alone, Peter could feel the tips of his ears heat up.

Wow, he hadn’t thought of Mr. Stark in years.

Alright, that’s not true. Peter thinks about him every time he wonders why he has an affinity for older men. Besides the point, he’s taken back to Midtown, sitting front row, head balanced on his palm watching dreamily as Mr. Stark explained how atoms and molecules join together through ionic and covalent bonding (which Peter already knew, so it was fine that he was zoning out). The man’s voice was like honey, words oozing smooth and sweet, rumbling deeply in his chest. Peter remembers every time he caught his eye while he scanned the room during lectures. Mr. Stark was 30 then, it was his first year teaching, and a 15 year age gap seemed like a canyon.

Peter tapped on his name to go to his profile so he can get a better look at his picture. His heart was racing, despite a few sporadic grey hairs at his temples, some crows feet wrinkling at the corner of his eyes, and deeper smile lines, he looked the absolute same. Fucking hot. If anything, all those things made him look even sexier. Licking his lips, Peter tried to go through his profile to see more photos of the man, unfortunately he had a lot of his privacy settings on so there wasn’t much to see but his last profile picture update and location. He still lived in New York, so that was a plus, but Peter wanted - needed to see more.

His thumb hovered over the Add Friend button. It wouldn’t be weird, would it? He was Facebook friends with other teachers from Midtown. He graduated over four years ago, and he wasn’t a lovesick kid with a school boy crush anymore. Fuck it, right? The worst he can do is deny the friend request.

Tap.

“Add Friend” turned into “Cancel Request”, and Peter blew out a large breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Alright, Peter. Time to turn in. He said to himself as he threw his phone onto his bed and got up to brush his teeth. No use waiting around, he wasn’t going to accept it tonight or any time soon for that matter. When he got back from the bathroom, he didn’t even bother looking at his phone. He plugged it in, placed it face down on his nightstand, and drifted off to sleep.

A few minutes later, the man’s phone lit up with a Facebook notification, unbeknownst to a slumbering Peter Parker.

Tony’s daily routine had been rather monotonous lately, to say the least. Since he’d made his way up the proverbial ladder of life and moved on from being a teacher to becoming a senior engineer at a major tech conglomerate, you’d think his day-to-day life of overseeing technical advancement projects wouldn’t be so boring.

The paycheck was substantially bigger than when he was a high school teacher and the amount of technology he had access to was more than the idle body walking the street could ever dream of, but…he missed teaching. He missed the kids. The pure unadulterated joy they displayed whenever Tony praised them on their science projects. He watched over brilliant men and women every day but nothing compared to the ambition of those kids.

Tony often found himself dreading going to work each day, and coming home to an empty house and take-out food his fiancée left for him that night.

Pepper was a great woman. Fierce and reliable. She was there when Tony’s parents died. She even stuck through all the years of Tony trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life. So, naturally, Tony proposed to her when he graduated from college. As a “thank you” and as a promise. That once he had enough money he would make an honest woman out of her. Of course, she already was an honest woman. It was Tony who needed the support, she was all he had left besides Rhodey, but he decided to join the Air Force and shipped off right after graduation. Tony sees him every couple of months, if even that.

She has had all these years to focus on her own career as well while Tony worked menial jobs and then became a teacher. When Tony finally got the Mechanical Engineer job, she was so relieved to not have to be the only one taking care of the bills. Though she never said it, Tony knew. Pepper is the head of HR at Oscorp as well as Norman Osborn’s personal assistant. Operating at the same routine for seven years now and she doesn’t seem to be bored, but that’s Pepper - reliable.

It’s been nine years since Tony asked her to marry him, and he’s been financially capable of paying for an adequate wedding for two of them. The truth is, Pepper has become a part of the monotony that Tony is so tired of.

Tony opened the door to their apartment, the main hall light illuminating the dark wood flooring and the entry table he tossed his keys down on. Toeing off his shoes, he could already smell the Thai food Pepper had eaten and left for him. He flipped the lights on and made his way to the kitchen, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the first two buttons in the process. Rounding the large white marble island at the center, Tony reached into the bottom cabinet, pulled out a bottle of scotch, and poured himself a finger before throwing the left-overs in the microwave to heat up.

A little white card with Pepper’s uniform handwriting sat on the table next to the take-out bag: Emergency at work. Don’t wait up. Love you, Pep x. Tony took a sip of his drink, unaffected, it’s been happening more as of late with Oscorp’s new launch around the corner.

“JARVIS, could ya turn on the TV for me? Oh, and heat up my food.” Tony spoke into the open space. He’d been working on his own Artificial Intelligence software in his spare time and recently implemented it-him into their apartment’s security and electrical. Pepper was wary at first, seeing Tony put up cameras in every single room. Even the bathroom, Tony? He assured her that it was unhackable, bet it on his life.

“Certainly, sir.” A disembodied british voice replied. Sure enough, the TV powered on and the microwave came to life.

“Thanks, J.” Tony would be lying if he said he wasn’t proud of himself. He’d been drawing up the specs for JARVIS since he was in high school, now he finally had the means to develop him.

When the microwave turned off, Tony gathered up his plate and went to sit on the black leather sectional in the living room. Shoveling a mouth full of pad thai with his chopsticks, he kicked up his feet to rest them on the ottoman in front of him. He very well knows he could just pull out his phone and look, but he wanted to give JARVIS a little workout.

“Got anything new for me?”

“An email from Mr. Justin Hammer about a job offer, would you like me to read it aloud to you, sir?” Tony waved his hand dismissively with a sour expression. Justin Hammer, a sad excuse for a tech mogul, cutting corners for a bigger pay off.

“Delete it, will ya?”

As Tony scrapes the rest of his plate clean, he rises off the couch and stretches his arms and body. The pain in his lower back calls for a hot shower to soothe his aching muscles. Earlier today he’d been bent over his lab table working on an advanced prosthesis that can form to any amputee with ease and give them full range of motion like it was theirs, not just a placeholder. He was grateful his employer seemed to actually care about the greater good.

Tony went to pour himself another finger before retreating to the bedroom to take that shower his body was craving. He undressed slowly, watching himself in the full length mirror opposite the foot of his California King bed. The tie went first, falling lightly to the carpeted floor. He unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and tossed it in the laundry basket along with his slacks. Olive skin pulled taut against the small yet defined muscles of his stomach, chest, and arms littered with various burns and scars from working with robotics and chemicals.

Tony definitely wasn’t 21 anymore but he knew he looked good for 37. He could only thank his genes for that and the still full head of hair despite his greying temples that he never bothered to dye.

“JARVIS, shower?” He heard the water splash against the tile of the shower floor and waited until he could see the steam bellow out into the hall to down the rest of his glass and make his way to the bathroom.

The hot spray connecting with his cool skin made him jump a little until he got used to the heat enough to relax. The buzz he was feeling from the scotch aiding the water in loosening his muscles. After washing his hair, Tony decided to stand beneath the spray for a while longer, reveling in the gentle caress of the water.

He then grabbed his mesh loofah ball, poured some body wash on it, and started scrubbing his body. Washing away the trials and tribulations of the day, along with some oil and grease. He worked over his arms, chest, and back. Bent over to wash his legs and feet, then dragged the loofah over his ass and stomach before he lightly grazed his cock, making it twitch in response.

God, he was so wound up, he and Pepper hadn’t had sex in over two months. Always so busy, always just missing each other. When they did happen to be home at the same time, they were too tired to do anything.

He wrapped a soapy hand around his shaft and stroked lazily to work himself to full hardness, which didn’t take very long. Tony tried thinking about Pepper but he couldn’t quite imagine her face and her body, the scotch must be making his mind hazy. He chuckled softly at the thought, not even believing it himself.

Searching through his brain for something to get him there, Tony grunted in annoyance that nothing was coming to him.

He thought harder, until a body started to form in his mind. Smooth pale skin over a lithe, hard body. The V at the bottom of the abdomen pointing to a skinny dick with a pretty pink head. Tony had a fondness toward pretty twinks in college, the one he was imagining mirrored the ones he fucked before he met Pepper.

His hand began stroking faster as his thoughts got more detailed. In his mind, he stretched the young man open with his fingers before seating his newly opened hole on Tony’s larger, thicker cock. He braced himself with one arm against the shower wall while his other hand tightened around his shaft. Hunched over, eyes closed, he saw a pert little ass bouncing up and down, swallowing every inch of him. He moaned loudly, keenly aware that he was home alone, imagining high whimpers and whines thrumming in his ears as the boy in his mind came. Tony came in spurts down the drain soon after with a choked off groan.

Rinsing himself again, he got out of the shower, quickly toweled off his body and hair before wrapping it around his waist and making his way out into the bedroom once again. His body definitely felt looser than it had been when he arrived home from work. Pulling out another of the same bottle of scotch from the small bar cart he had in his room, he poured himself another drink.

“Have a good shower, sir?” If Tony didn’t know any better, he’d think JARVIS was taunting him.

Tony scowled and raised an eyebrow at the ceiling.

“I don’t remember programming you to be nosy.” He mumbled under his breath.

“Actually, sir. You designed me to do exactly that.”

“Or to give me lip.” No response.

“You did receive a new notification in your absence. Would you like to know what it is?” He took a sip of his drink.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You received a Facebook friend request from a Mr. Peter Parker.”

Peter Parker? Why did that seem familiar?

“Throw it up on the screen for me, J.” The flatscreen lit up, displaying Peter’s profile.

The first thing Tony noticed was the sharp, angular jawline coupled with high cheekbones. A stark contrast to the delicate chestnut curls pushed back into a nice cowlick wave. His smile was bright, pure, and genuine, like the photo had been snapped right as he finished laughing.

It wasn’t until Tony looked at his eyes did he realize who this was. The soft brown eyes were identical to a lanky teenage boy that sat in the front row of his Chemistry class when he taught at Midtown High. Even behind his wiry glasses back then, Tony could tell that his eyes radiated a wholesome energy - just like they did now. That had been...what? Seven years ago? Peter was one of his most brilliant students. Hardly paid attention in class but knew the material like the back of his hand.

Tony almost felt guilty about finding him attractive. Almost.

He accepted the request without another thought. Peter would be 22 by now, nothing weird about that, right? He scrolled through his basic info. Still lives in New York. Graduated from Columbia. Single. Interested in men and women. He doesn’t ever really post anything, then again neither did Tony. The only things on his page were happy birthday posts and tagged photos from his Aunt May. Tony remembered parent/teacher conferences with her, he guessed being smokin’ hot ran in the family.

Tony couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about potentially lusting over this kid. He’d always been faithful to Pepper, but something was missing. Tony craved excitement and some inkling of control over his life. Besides, he could look, as long as he didn’t touch. This is just a Facebook friendship after all.

He pulled the Facebook app up on his phone and tapped on the “Message” icon. When the screen pulled up the chat box, Tony gulped down the rest of his scotch, feeling just on the right side of drunk, and typed out two words.

Hey, Kid.

tags: @sweetqueen449, @slut-for-starker, @dim-ships-johnlock, @starkerhowlter, @sthefystarkersworld, @crazycocococonut, @bris-sins, @delicateavenuenacho, @problemchildnoonewanted (I’ll def be implementing some of your points in future chapters!)

#starker #starker fic #starker au #teacher/student #tony stark x peter parker #Peter Parker/Tony Stark #ironspider #sluttystark stuff

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madgeinvoltronland · 5 years ago

Text

Thank the Stars

Tonight (April 21) we can see the Lyrid meteor shower in my country. Since I used that event for my contribution to the Kidge zine last year, and since I never posted it, it seemed like a good time to do so, even if I’m not really into Voltron anymore.

Rating: General As he gazes upon the stars, Keith realizes how much of a sap he is. The good thing is, Katie is just as bad as him.

As he was waiting in line to board his bus, Keith realised he had been wrong. So wrong. One would think that students wouldn’t want to get up this early for the 5 a.m bus back home. But here he was, among students still half asleep, nowhere close to boarding anytime soon.

But it was worth it.

The sooner he left, the sooner he’d be back home, back with Katie.

He hadn’t seen his girlfriend since New Year; too busy trying to pass his first midterms to go see her, and her too busy with her last year of high school. And he missed her. Hearing her distorted voice during their daily phone calls wasn’t enough. He needed to see her, run his fingers through her hair, and put his arms around her shoulders to keep her close. She fit perfectly against his side, her warmth all against him the best way to sooth him, and he missed it all.

He was so busy thinking about finally reuniting with his girlfriend that he spaced out, holding out the line when it was his time to board. The guy behind him complained, pulling him out of his thoughts, and he quickly found his place. It was not the most comfortable, but it was cheap, and in a few hours, he would be together with Katie again.

Just as the clock stroke 5a.m. his phone buzzed.

[Katie] Hey hotstuff. Didnt miss ur bus?

[Keith] Hey shortstuff. All ready to get back pain. The things I do for you

[Katie] Aww u sap ♥

Keith was about to answer when the driver announced they were departing, and which stop they’d make. He looked outside, watching the scenery at first, then up to the sky, where the few stars you could see above the city shone brightly.

And Katie was probably right about him because that sight immediately reminded him of the day they got together.

Katie loved space, just like everyone in her family. She was following in her father’s footsteps, aiming to work for NASA. And Keith, while he was interested in space exploration, mostly loved seeing the way her face lighted up when talking about it. So when he had realised the Perseids were around the corner, he had asked her if she wanted to go camping with him, where they could see the stars without light pollution in the way. So, maybe he was indeed a sap.

But honestly, she was just as bad as him.

[Keith] Like you’re one to talk. Remember last summer? The perseids?

[Katie] Yea. We spent hours loading ur car, but it broke

Sure, that wasn’t his proudest moment. He had known for a while that his car was having problems, so it should have been no surprise. But that wasn’t his point.

[Keith] And you found a way to bring the stars to us

As soon as they had realized that they couldn’t go, she had asked him to give her a few hours, and then join her at her place. It was a strange request, but even then, he couldn’t say no to her.

[Katie] And?

[Keith] You’re a sap too

[Keith] You projected the nasa direct just to confess

When he’d gotten to her house, she had led him to the attic, where strangely enough a round camping tent had been installed. She had grabbed the sleeping bags he’d bought over and gone inside, leaving him utterly confused, until he had joined her.

She had set up her laptop and a projector inside. The projector was facing some kind of dome-shaped mirror, and the reflected projection followed the curve of the walls, giving the impression you were surrounded by a screen. Katie had instructed him to get comfortable while she finished setting up everything, so he had sat on his sleeping bag. The sound of cicadas and wind ruffling through leaves slowly filled the place.

And when the night sky replaced whatever was on Katie’s screen, projected all around them, he couldn’t help his awe. It was almost like they were out camping, the only things missing being the smell of grass and the bugs (which was probably a good thing). She had managed to make them travel, without actually going anywhere.

[Katie] And ill never listen to Lances ideas anymore, that was dumb

He knew her enough to know that it was just her embarrassment talking. She had been just as embarrassed that night.

Lance’s idea of the perfect confession was to set the perfect mood. Not that dumb, but when their trip got canceled his alternative was… so Lance-like.

Katie had waited for him to voice his awe to tell him that it wasn’t as magical as she had wanted, though there was something that could make it better.

Keith being her boyfriend.

Even with the dim light of the projector as their only light source he had been able to see her blush. Which got worse when she’d started word vomiting, confessing that she had planned on asking him out during their trip. That when it got canceled, she’d called Lance in a panic, asking him what to do. That he had been the one to suggest that pick-up line. That she’d went with it because every other time she had tried to confess, he either didn’t get it, or she had lost her nerves. That if he wasn’t interested, she hoped they could still be friends.

He had stopped her then, grabbing her hand to stop her rambling, intertwining their fingers to anchor himself. To this day he could still remember how fast his heart had been beating. But he had been elated, smiling while he reassured her that he was more than interested.

As anxious as the whole confession had made them feel, leaning toward each other had felt right, natural. It was merely a peck, but that soft kiss had melted the tension in the room, and they had laid back together to enjoy the projection.

[Keith] I liked it

The gesture was sweet, and with Keith leaving for college a few weeks later, he barely had time to do something for her in return. They barely had time to see each other period. But maybe that could change… If he remembered correctly, there was another meteor shower happening in April…

It was a good thing he still had data left and it didn’t take long for him to look it up on his phone— the Lyrid meteor shower, scheduled April 22 to 24, right during his break.

Now he just needed to see if Katie was free, so he called her.

It didn’t take her long to answer.

“Hey, I was just replying. You’re okay?”

Her voice was rough, she was probably short on sleep, but it worked for him. She would catch up on what he was planning if she was too awake.

“Everything's fine, just need to ask you something real quick.”

She yawned. “Ask away.”

“Are you doing anything this week?”

She groaned and for a while, the only sounds he could hear were ruffling and cursing. Keith almost felt bad for making her get up.

“No,” she finally answered, “free all week.”

“Good, cause I have a late birthday present so don’t plan anything for Monday to Wednesday.”

“Urg, where’s my pen now…”

More ruffling could be heard, and Keith couldn’t help it, he chuckled.

“Don’t laugh at me Keith Kogane, this is all your fault. You could have waited till we were together.”

“Guess I’m lucky you love me.”

It took her a few seconds to answer, but when she did her voice was soft, and he could picture her blushing.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll let you sleep a bit more. See you when I arrive?”

“See you.”

He hung up with a smile

He’d have a lot of things to plan, but he couldn’t wait to finally take her on that long overdue trip. He’d need to borrow or rent a car, because his old one was still not trustworthy, but this time, it was going to happen.

The soft music coming from the radio was the only sound in the car as they drove out of the city. Katie had to be honest, she was kind of curious. Keith had kept his plans a secret, and she had refrained from looking into it despite how much she wanted to know. If Keith wanted to surprise her, she wasn’t going to spoil him the pleasure.

If only he wasn’t frowning and looking displeased right now.

He was looking at the road like it had done something to offend him. Which didn’t make sense, because they were alone, and it wasn’t bumpy or anything, so it was all smooth driving.

“Hey,” she tried to grab his attention by putting her hand on his arm, “is something wrong?”

He looked at her from the corner of his eyes and sighed, finally relaxing his shoulder.

“It’s just the weather…”

She looked up and, sure enough, you could barely see the sky behind the clouds. But at least it didn’t look like it would rain, and she pointed it out.

“That’s… still not enough,” he answered, his fingers drumming against the wheel.

There was obviously more on his mind, but Katie knew when to push, and when to give him time. He would talk eventually, and the car fell silent once again.

It didn’t last.

“It’s the Lyrid meteor shower tonight.”

And suddenly, everything made sense.

Their conversation when he was coming back from college, his sudden phone call… It wasn’t just any birthday trip. It was a second attempt at their failed first-date-slash-confession-date. And as much as she wanted to play it cool, the attention made her shy.

Katie Holt, the high school genius who always speaks her mind, rendered speechless by a date plan. It was still a nice feeling, and she couldn’t help but smile as she grabbed Keith’s arm again.

“We still have some time, maybe the sky will clear. And if not, there’s still tomorrow.”

Keith smiled, and he let go of the wheel with his right hand to hold hers.

“I know, I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

“You’ll call me a sap but,” she took a deep breath, and looked straight ahead to try and hide her blush. “A trip just the two of us is already pretty sweet.”

And as they held each other later that night to keep warm, eyes glued to the sky, they both thanked the stars for bringing them together.

#sometimes I write #kidge #this will be my last post on this blog

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joecial-distancing · 5 years ago

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2019 in review in review:

A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing.

Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_____________________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.

School’s been fine/better than fine.

Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.

Did not get better with covid, lol

Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.

Somehow got extremely better during covid.

Books

Grant (finished)

We stan a taurus legend

Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.

Mort (discworld)

Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.

Don Quixote p. II

Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.

Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)

had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.

Crime and Punishment (revisited)

Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it

Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)

Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy

The Brothers Karamazov

SPQR

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)

Pet Sematary

Not my favorite King, but not bad

Sourcery (discworld)

still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.

The Devil's Teeth

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.

Homage to Catalonia

This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.

Lyndon Johnson I

Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.

The Razor's Edge

Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s).

Cat's Cradle

There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”

Lyndon Johnson II

Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.

Libra

I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.

Gravity's Rainbow

This book absolutely kicked my ass

Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.

From Caligari to Hitler

Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.

I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.

Movies

Venom

Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.

Harryhauser Argonauts

Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.

2001: a Space Oddyssey

First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!

A Good American (the NSA doc)

Dr. Strangelove

Mel Brooks History of the World p. I

Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.

In Bruges

Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.

Spiderverse

Fukkin awesome!

Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.

You Only Live Twice

Highlander (Revisited)

I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is

Moonraker

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.

Kung Fu Hustle

Ichi the Killer

Really gross, really fun

Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)

The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.

John Wick 3*

Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight”

Akira

A classic

Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)

Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore

The Revenant

MCU Spiderman

Fuck this was awful.

MCU Spiderman 2*

Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.

Lmao this was completely awful

Rites

Dredd (non-stallone)

oh hey Lena Headey’s in this

For All Mankind!

Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary

Lion King *

Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *

Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand

Blowout

A good john lithgow movie

also I think I like travolta in things.

Lord of War

A Good cage movie

I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.

Taxi Driver

A classic

Snowpiercer

Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,

dbz big green dub

Exorcist III

Brad Dourif just tearing it apart

Deep Red (argento)

Suspiria (1977)

Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.

Elf Bowling

Thanks, Gnome

Parasite *

Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while

FMA: B

Rick & Morty

Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.

Leterkenny

Mob Psycho 100

One Punch Man

Deadwood

Watchmen

Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)

Music

New Avantasia

HEALTH/ show

lol remember concerts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show

Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.

Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.

New Yeasayer

Sad they split up

Steve Wilson Tull remixes

Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.

Stonefield

Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music

Video Games

Civ VI: Gathering Storm

Hades

Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike

Baba is You

Untitled Goose Game

Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped

finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity

Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.

Pillars II

Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.

There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.

Pokemon shield

Cuphead

pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving

Celeste

Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.

Disco Elysium

None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.

Breath of the Wild

You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.

Podcasts

Relentless Picnic Patreon feed

The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.

Picnic Discord!

FatT Counterweight

Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.

FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world

8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.

Law School

He’s in everythiiiing!

You Must Remember This: Manson family

*There’s* the context

Misc.

Kindle train guy

Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him

toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)

drunk and dragged to a drag show

Central park football family

Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker

Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters

2018 in review (cards):

MySelf (CC)

Self: Tower

Blocked: 10 Cups

Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords

Material: 3 Swords

Past: Justice

Future: Page Wands

Attitude: Sun

External: King Swords

Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins

Trajectory: High Priestess

Also Self:

Hierophant

7 Cups

7 Coins

Blind Spot:

(self & others): 5 cups || (others not self): High Priestess

(self not others): Moon || (nobody): 3 Cups

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sciencenewser · 5 years ago

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Testing Sunjammer, new Solar Sail by NASA

Testing Sunjammer Solar sail, it is a term defined by science fiction short story “Sunjammer” whose writer is Arthur C. Clarke in his 1964. In his story, he named Sunjammer is a method of powering small spacecraft without the use of an expensive propellant. It is a method for the propellant-free population and is quickly carving out space in the future of spaceflight. For testing a new type of solar sail system NASA has teamed up with NanoAvionics which run the mission by NASA’s Ames Research Center called Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) in Silicon Valley. It is a small satellite move to low Earth orbit with a solar sail that unfolds around 800 square feet. The mission ASC3 will work to replace rocket propellants by developing and testing newly designed solar sails by using sunlight beams to give the nanosatellite velocity. NASA is an old technology, has thrown a solar test before in the year 2011. It is the second attempt of a flight test called Sunjammer that was canceled in 2014. The Planetary Society of Non-profit scientific organizations flew its own crowd-funded solar spacecraft last year. The NanoAvinic’s who have designed and constructed a 12U bus at its Columbia and according to research news Testing Sunjammer Solar Sail NASA. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia is also participating in the project. A Solar Sail is basically just like a sailing ship from the old clipper ships. You see in the movies but instead of the physical wind, a solar sail in space is a sail that reflects sunlight. People don’t realize as the light reflects from you it’s actually pushing on you and that’s because light doesn’t have rest mass but it does have momentum. When demonstrated, sun based sail innovation could empower a large group of adaptable space missions. Including flying a propelled space climate cautioning framework to all the more rapidly and precisely ready satellite administrators and utilities on Earth of geomagnetic storms brought about by coronal mass discharges from the sun. The innovation additionally could help expel a portion of the in excess of 8,000 bits of orbital dispatch refuse and jetsam ringing the planet. Lead station-keeping activities, or float at high scopes above Earth for correspondences and perception; and drive an assortment of fuels, profound space investigation, and gracefully shipping missions. They give a slight push to it. If you stick a light enough and big enough metallic sail near the sun, away from Earth’s gravity it’s going to move. The object gets closer to the sun, it gets a lot more push from a sail and if the object cut the distance in half, it will go half away toward the sun from the earth. From the initial push, the object moves faster than a rocket. The fact that light pushes objects has been known for quite some time but the fact that it could be used for propelling a spacecraft. It discovered until the Marine missions which were a bunch of probes in the 60s. F Brent Abbott CEO of NanoAvionics North America said: “I’m very happy & excited that NanoAvionics will be a part of Nasa’s effort. Eventually leading to more marvelous deep-space missions following the first interplanetary CubeSats Marco-A and B (Mars Cube One). The solar sail teamed up with NanoAvionics will build. Its system at new Columbia in Illinois with the final integration to be done under Nasa Ames facilities. Read the full article

#NASA #solarsail #Sunjammer

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virmillion · 6 years ago

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Ibytm - T minus 58 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 2,594

Aside from the one confrontation post-petticoat ukulele conspiracy, Logan still hasn’t talked with Cadmium. Really, truly talked to the guy. Tagging along on his tours doesn’t count. Granted, a fair amount of his Tuesdays and Thursdays are occupied with thoughts of Cadmium, but Logan does still have a life outside of him. It comes with no small amount of annoyance that this other life involves dealing with unsolvable problems at his internship.

“I heard there’s no real answer,” Cassidy says. She stabs her pen in the air, writing imaginary equations and scowling at the empty space.

“I heard they had this problem, like, years ago,” Joy says. Logan steeples his fingers under his chin with his elbows propped on his knees, watching Joy spin circles on her chair with her nose pointed at the ceiling. “I bet they already know the answer, and any intern that can’t crack it gets kicked to the curb.”

“Somehow, I feel like excessive alliteration isn’t the answer, Joy,” Micah calls from the water jug. His perspective might seem more valuable if his cheek weren’t flattened against the top of the machine in an utterly pitiful display of boredom.

“Oh, and I bet you already figured it out, huh, smart guy?” Joy’s retort also seems less valuable, as it comes at the same moment that she smacks her ankle into the leg of her desk, her spinning cut short. Logan is getting the sinking feeling that he chose the wrong scientific field.

“Maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Does someone want to read it again, and we all think of it with clean slates?” Logan glances around the room, hoping that his non-contribution will be sufficient. “Or, hey, Alex, have you got an idea? You haven’t said too much yet.”

Alex’s shock of dyed yellow hair jolts as they lift their eyes to peer over the top of the computer. “Can I get you a handkerchief, or did you dodge the splashback when you threw me under the bus just now?”

“ I’ll read it, you bunch of babies,” Cassidy sighs. “Okay. Riddle me this, folks. Thought experiments for the modern era.”

“Lay off the Mcelroy references and finish the question,” Micah grumbles.

Cassidy wrinkles her nose and sticks out her tongue before continuing. “The ship of Theseus proposes that a ship leaves a location and has every single part of itself periodically replaced before reaching a second location. The question is whether the ship to arrive is a different ship than the one to depart. Bear this in mind while assuming all cultural divides and disparities—cultural, political, scientific, or otherwise—are held in an impenetrable stasis that has no effect on the contents of the riddle, and conclusively solve the following. Jeez, talk about a run-on sentence.

“NASA launches a rocket to Neptune, and the only passenger is the child of a Russian and an American, where the parents were born on Earth and the child on Mars. The inhabited rocket was built half of parts from NASA and half of parts from Roscosmos. It contains enough parts to make an entirely new rocket, all of which were created on the moon. Allowing adequate suspensions of disbelief in favor of the passenger’s ability to build the new rocket and touch down on Neptune alive, which flag should be placed on Neptune as the first to arrive: That of Mars, the Moon, Earth, America, or Russia?”

“Does the moon even have its own flag?” Micah muses.

Joy slams the side of her fist on her desk hard enough to rattle the pens scattered across the floor. “This is such a stupid question. It barely even has anything to do with space!”

“It is about non-mathematical rocket science,” Alex points out.

“You could take the exact same problem and change a few key words to make it about a fish being flushed down a toilet,” Logan counters, “and nothing would change.”

“Is the fish dead?” Micah asks. “Because now you’re introducing aquatic zombies to the equation.”

“No aquatic zombies!” Joy and Alex shout in unison. Logan joins in the cry with a muttered mimic of his own, and even Cassidy looks quite done with Micah, who traces his finger along the side of the water tank before patting the top.

“Aquatic zombies,” he whispers forlornly. Logan isn’t entirely sure how Micah managed to weasel his way into an internship here, but he stopped questioning it a long time ago.

“It’s the moon, isn’t it?” Cassidy tries. This brings about a chaotic storm of argued disagreements through which Logan couldn’t possibly begin to sort.

“But the passenger was born on Mars, so it’s the Martian flag.”

“But their parents were of Earth, do we know where the passenger was conceived? Earthling parents mean it can’t be Mars’ flag.”

“Oh, like the Opportunity rover would plant a flag on Neptune.”

“Rip in pieces, Oppy.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be the country of origin of the mom, since she’s the one that had to carry the passenger to term?”

“That’s sexist, and we don’t know which parent is which.”

“It’s heretonormative, anyway.”

“You mean cisnormative.”

“I know what I meant to mean.”

“Unless you meant both. Trans father for the win.”

“Trans father, transformer, illuminati?”

“Does Earth even have a flag?”

“Where was the passenger raised? That might change the answer.”

The door opposite the stairs slams open as another intern with dirty blond hair and a beanie stumbles in looking particularly disheveled—well, more so than usual, at least.

“The passenger opened a wormhole immediately after being born, and raised themself on Neptune,” Logan deadpans. “Roman, if you haven’t got any good news, I swear to—”

“They cancelled the level eight project,” the man at the door says. Were it not for the bright gold name embroidered along the breast pocket of his shirt—Roman—Logan might believe him to be a random guy from off the street. “They figured out the missing sections—without our input, obviously—and decided the clearance rate was excessive. Basically, they said a toddler with a functioning search engine could crack it, so we should stop wasting our time.”

“Has the toddler ever been to Neptune?” Logan asks dryly. A hollow chorus of laughs ricochets around the room, quieted only by the click of the hour hand on the only analog clock hung on the wall. It must’ve been ages since Logan souped up the old thing to announce clockins, breaks, and clockouts.

“For the next hour,” Joy declares, “Neptune does not exist.”

“Seconded,” the other interns agree, putting their respective monitors to sleep and shuffling for the break room.

Roman lags behind to enter after Logan, prodding the small of his back and tilting his head toward the computers. He clears his throat meaningfully. Logan sighs, casting one last doleful look into the breakroom before joining Roman out on the floor again.

“They did want me to give you this,” Roman murmurs, “but keep it cazh.”

“Nothing is less ‘cazh’ than you shortening the word ‘casual’ like that,” Logan says, nonchalantly stretching an arm over his head. On the downswing, he takes the item from Roman’s hand and threads it between his fingers.

“I think I got the same deal, but don’t mention it, yeah?” Roman steps into the breakroom first, allowing Logan a moment to dawdle and inspect his acquisition. A flat disc, about the size of a well-used roll of scotch tape, with the NASA logo on both sides. Logan pinches the edges beside the first and last letter experimentally, and a USB plug pops out from the bottom of the logo. He pinches again, and it slides away. It looks for all the world like an overly expensive keychain one might find in a cheap museum. Logan shrugs, pockets it, and joins the others in the breakroom.

Only Roman appears to be in any semblance of a good mood—then again, he got clearance to visit the upper offices while everyone else pondered that stupid riddle. After teasing Roman about how he was probably about to get The Talk (the firing talk, that is) from the higher ups, it only took the rest of the floor about five minutes to give up on individual glory and try to solve the problem together. Obviously, it didn’t help.

“We could send someone for coffee,” Cassidy says. At least, Logan thinks that’s what she said. Her voice is a little muffled, what with how her face is pressed against the table.

“And get yelled at for prioritizing caffeine over the crappy cloud juice we’ve already got here?” Alex replies, tracing their finger over the glass front of the vending machine. Its only products are bottled water and expired heath candy bars. Four bucks a pop. “I’d rather dehydrate than take that kind of reprimanding.”

“I am literally going to commit multiple federal and moral crimes if I don’t get some real bean juice in my system in the next hour,” Joy grumbles. A true testament to her name.

Micah, apparently having moved on from the destruction of his aquatic zombie idea, springs to his feet from where he was sprawled across the floor. “We could use Logan’s app!”

This might be a good time to mention that, in padding his resume to apply for this extended internship, Logan made a brief foray into coding, which resulted in an app he dubbed ‘fetch quest.’ Basically a personalized coffee order service, more specialized than door dash, where instead of ordering food straight to your location, you put out a request for coffees—usually from Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Biggby, the like—to be delivered by the colloquially nicknamed fetch kids. Upon getting their coffee, the buyer reimburses the fetch kid for the coffee, as well as an obligatory tip so the fetch kid can turn a quick buck.

To tell the truth, Logan was genuinely too lazy to walk to the campus cafeteria for a coffee while working on homework, and paid his roommate five dollars to do it for him. (He paid in nickels, by the way.) So lazy was Logan, in fact, that he made an app to avoid ever dealing with the inconvenience again.

“I’m down for that,” Cassidy mumbles. “Who’s got the app? Seems kinda rude to do six separate orders, y’know, like ordering a different personal pizza from different locations and having them arrive at the same time, then fight to the death for the right to deliver their pizza first, so they miss the thirty minute limit and no one gets paid.”

“Okay, so Cassidy gets a decaf,” Alex says, swiping around on their phone. “Everyone just getting their usuals? Same as the last fetch quest?” Grunts of agreement are their only answer—aside from Roman, who peers over Alex’s shoulder to design an obscenely personalized drink.

“Pitch in a five dollar tip for the barista,” Logan calls. “I’ll cover it.” Roman perks up at that as Alex taps the appropriate button on their phone. Before he can ask, Logan nods, saying, “I’ll spot you the six dollars.”

“It’s actually closer to seven,” Roman admits, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I got a dairy substitute, don’t sue me. I’m broke, anyway, so it wouldn’t help if you won the suit.”

“This is a paid internship,” Joy points out.

Roman looks aghast. “You guys are getting paid?” It’s unclear whether he’s kidding.

“Order placed and transaction pending,” Alex announces, “so start up the charitable donation pool to my wallet.” Roman initiates the process, pulling the beanie off his head and carrying it around the room for everyone to toss their bills in. He can only manage a weak smile when Logan tosses in double what he ought to.

“Wait, Logan,” Micah says, “you didn’t get anything last time.”

“Shoot, yeah, what can I get you? No one’s picked it up yet,” Alex says, pulling the wads of bills from Roman’s hat.

“Just do a fetch kid’s delight, I guess. Price limit five.” Roman darts across the room to grab the proffered bill from Logan, attempting (and spectacularly failing) to parkour over the chair on his way back. The rickety plastic flies out from underneath him and his chin smacks the carpet as he goes down. Before anyone thinks about moving to help, he jumps to his feet and dusts off his knees, pretending as if nothing happened.

“It’s been accepted,” Alex announces.

“Maybe the trick is to work out whether the rocket, being from the moon, is the first to land, or if it has to be a life form in order to count for reaching Neptune first,” Joy suggests. Cassidy lifts her head to respond, thinks better of it, and drops her face back onto the table.

“That’s only assuming you give the rocket living rights to plant the flag,” Micah says.

“Did you guys consider the ramifications of the nationalities of each parent?” Roman asks.

“Yes,” everyone else groans in unison. Even Logan says it, now thoroughly annoyed by how much inconvenience Roman was able to skip in favor of retrieving a little flashdrive.

“Do we need to take into account the heritage of the parents?” Cassidy tries.

“It wasn’t included in the information backing up the question, and we’re only supposed to get an answer based on what we concretely know already,” Alex replies.

“We don’t concretely know already which flag they plant,” Logan offers, “so maybe the answer is that we aren’t supposed to have one.”

“That’s exactly what someone who knows the answer would say,” Joy mutters. This manner of conversation continues for another fifteen minutes or so, until someone knocks on the door at the top of the stairs.

“Liquid inspiration!” Roman shouts, vaulting over the empty chairs on his sprint for the door. As he swings it open to reveal a very familiar silhouette, Alex clicks a few times on their phone, finalizing the transaction upon receival.

Apart from the grey and red plaid scarf wrapped around his neck, Cadmium looks like he walked straight out of one of his own tours, down to the maroon cardigan and black skinny jeans. “Fetch quest fulfillment for Ally-oopsy-olly—”

“Yep, yes, that’s me,” Alex interrupts quickly, not letting him finish saying the username. They take a couple of the cups from Cadmium, stepping aside to let Joy and Micah help with the rest. Cadmium makes eye contact with Logan for a split second, inclines his chin, and turns to leave. He pulls out his phone, the screen angled enough for Logan to see the fetch quest home screen loading in more requests.

“Wait, we didn’t tip you,” Logan calls, surging past the other interns to catch up.

“Yeah, we did,” Alex says, “I put in your five, and I have my account set for an auto-gratuity of twenty—”

“Shut up , Alex,” Logan hisses over his shoulder. He turns to Cadmium, who looks somewhere between amused and bewildered. If he landed on Neptune, which emotion would touch down first? “Here y’are. Thanks.” Logan allows the last word to linger in the air, implying an unvoiced request for a name as he passes Cadmium a ten.

Cadmium glances from his phone—now proudly displaying a cheerful reimbursement and tip breakdown message—to the bill and back to his phone. He nods slowly, taking the ten and heading down the stairs. Logan blinks, watching him go.

“Wow,” Roman says, coming closer to rest his elbow on Logan’s shoulder. “You’ve got it bad, my guy.”

“Oh, shove off.”

#labhwrites #mine #i'll bring you the moon #ibytm

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jessicaevansuca · 6 years ago

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Space Suit Stupidity

As I have been going through this project, I have been keeping an eye out for relevant news articles and information about NASA. One story that has stuck out as it is so relevant to what I have been looking at is the news that NASA had planned their first all-female space walk but had to cancel it at short notice because they only had one medium sized spacesuit. Resulting in a man taking one of the places as he fit a large. This, as well as being a funny story, has a quite serious meaning behind it, and sort of unintentionally pulls NASA back to its old ways of ignoring women. I do want to incorporate this story into my work and maybe only make T-shirts in a size small, as a sort of satire towards NASA.

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vaguerdoubts-blog · 7 years ago

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HEADCANON: NEWTON’S COMPANIES.

The first company that World Enterprises bought out was, of course, Eastman Kodak. It took less than a year of Newton as CEO to buy them out. It was more bitterness than business. Newton couldn’t stand any competition in the camera world. World Enterprises shot to the top of the Fortune lists so fast that Bryce and Farnsworth had no hope of catching up. At this point, although begrudgingly, neither could contest Newton’s World Enterprises takeover because it brought them so much money.

He never needed to take over Technicolour or any of its parent associations. Newton’s own WORLDCOLOUR had eclipsed the matter entirely. All studios and cinemas used Worldcolour now.

RCA didn’t stand a chance. They fought back, yes, but an offer of (1980s) a billion and a half bucks and they caved. Even they recognised that Newton could take recording, engineering, and sound production to the heights they couldn’t have dreamt of. They knew he could run the company from afar, and that freed them from constant tape-running and time-consuming mixing. Newton could draft in his own people to handle that.

Then, there went DuPont, and, with it, Eli Lilly. Newton knew what he was doing with chemistry and pharmacology. DuPont offered themselves without a word. They saw from the beginning that Newton could manage the commercial and business side barely lifting a finger. Eli Lilly was harder. They demanded more than Newton offered. Newton cut the offer. He knew his game theory. Either a lower sum or the initial offer. They fell for it. They took the initial offer.

There was nothing that Sony could do. He snapped them up in the space of the smallest blink. Besides DuPont, they were the largest company he’d chase. Four and a half billion and that was it settled. World Enterprises had returned to electronics. Walkmans were so primitive. Within months, Newton had cleaned that up. The World Enterprises cassette players were powerful, loud, robust, and he’d engineered them to be able to find the spaces between tracks and thjus skip them. The old Sony establishment were astounded.

After the DuPont and Lilly takeovers, Newton became fascinated, and somewhat fixated, on chemical companies. It was on to Hoffmann-La Roche. They’d started early in the world of star pharmaceuticals. They were, after all, the inventors of benzodiazepines. They’d shoved the danger of barbiturates out of the market. Newton loved that in them. He wasn’t a drug user himself, save for booze, but he did appreciate that accidental altruism of theirs. Altruism for money. There. Gone. Another for the World Enterprises chemistry division. Another for the international monopoly.

Now, he did want to explore chemistry further. He wanted retail pharmacies. He wanted to expand beyond his business pharmacy world. CVS Health Corporation’s star was fading. It was an easy takeover. Operating as Newton Health, he grubbed up every chance he could to run a retail pharmacy. The supplies were easily sourced from Lilly, now known as Lilly Newton, and from Roche World Enterprises. He didn’t need to put much work or capital into that. Eventually he consolidated his pharmaceutical companies into World Pharmaceuticals, still as a subsidiary of World Enterprises.

By the time Newton reached them, Halliburton were on the rocks. It was playing with fire to try to buy Halliburton. They were, despite their depths, an US government contractor. After all, their depths came from war crime allegations. Newton was stupid to attempt a takeover. He knew the US government had bullets with his name on them. He cancelled it. He couldn’t buy Halliburton any more than he could buy NASA. He backed down and left Halliburton alone. This, perhaps, was his greatest lifetime error. It brought him far too close to government attention. He’d regret this his entire life.

Newton Electronics was entirely his own venture. He started it early, but kept it separate from the World Enterprise umbrella for years. Eventually he consolidated them. Newton Electronics was largely in the market of televisions and projectors, and broadcasting equipment. It was the closest, apart from his spacecraft project, to a labour of love that Newton ever had.

#headcanon 𑁋 ⟔ᵇᵉᵍᶦⁿ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵉⁿᵈ ᶦⁿ ᵉᵗᵉʳⁿᶦᵗʸ⟓

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superseraphim7 · 6 years ago

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Now that the senior Khazar Satanic Kabbalists have fallen, second-tier officials such as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, World Bank Chief Jim Yong Kim and Serena Rothschild (Jacob Rothschild's widow) are being eliminated as the war to liberate humanity. Ginsburg "has disappeared and may be dead or still in the hospital in New York, missing two weeks of oral arguments in the Supreme Court, or throughout the month of January, without proof of life, setting the stage for President Donald Trump from USA UU Justice, "say the Pentagon sources. Jim Yong Kim, appointed by Clinton, was forced to resign as president of the World Bank due to corruption, say sources of the Dragon family. Investigators are focusing in particular on Haiti and Kim's involvement in Clinton's corruption related to the Haiti earthquake artificially triggered in 2010, according to CIA sources. Serena Rothschild was the widow (or wife) of the old Zionist Baron Jacob Rothschild and mother of Nathaniel Rothschild. All we know is that she died "after a brief illness". We have reported that Jacob Rothschild is already dead, but it seems that attempts are being made to make it appear that he is still alive to prevent his son Nathaniel, of progressive mentality from taking power from the British branch of this still powerful family. In any case, with the US military courts. UU In progress, many more prominent intermediaries and financiers will be eliminated from power in the coming days and weeks, say Pentagon sources. Among those who will soon fall are the IMF director, Christine Lagarde, and the main financiers of KKR ... ... Henry Kravis and George Roberts, the sources say. In addition, there will be Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom and mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, say the Pentagon sources. KKR and his employee, General David, "betray us". Petraeus is being charged in US military courts. UU For its role in the creation and the armed Daesh (we do not want to insult the Goddess by calling it ISIS), the sources say. KKR public relations had not answered a question on this matter when this newsletter was made public. French military sources, for their part, say that Emmanuel Macron will soon be removed by a military government that will arrest Kabbalists who have stolen French democracy for the past 11 years. After that, they will return true democracy to the Republic. Long live France! The movement to arrest Shinzo Abe will take more time, but preliminary work has begun, as French police accused Tsunekazu Takeda, chairman of the Japan Olympic Committee, on charges of bribery. While this may be seen as a French reprisal for the arrest and mistreatment of former Nissan president Carlos Ghosn, there is more to the story. According to Japanese right-wing sources, Takeda is a member of the Japanese imperial family and participated in the 2020 Olympic Games as a reward for accompanying the Fukushima tsunami and the nuclear mass-murder attack on March 11, 2011. Abe, his cabinet and the Iwasaki Mitsubishi clan will be shot down as a result of their complicity with this mass murder, the sources say. According to MI6 sources, Theresa May is being eliminated for her role in the attempt to sabotage Brexit and hand over control of British intelligence to the families of gangsters who control the EU. The letter below was sent by the former head of British Intelligence to parliamentarians to warn them of May's betrayal. In addition, the US government It has made public that it no longer recognizes the EU as a legitimate government by degrading its diplomatic status. IMF Director Christine Lagarde is also being attacked by the US. due to its continuous effort to position a Special Drawing Right of the IMF (SDR) of the cryptocurrency type as an alternative to the US dollar, say the CIA sources. On the other hand, an ambassador of the Dragon family says that the IMF will be liquidated. Lagarde previously had begged the Chinese the opportunity to move the IMF to Asia and was rejected, the source said. The IMF has a miserable record of forcing poor countries to impoverish their own people to hand over resources to corporations controlled by the Khazar Mafia. In any case, it seems that as the network closes, the bankers have begun to fall from the buildings again. British intelligence says that bankers are being murdered both to cover up the traces of evidence that lead to the elderly and to collect insurance money. Speaking of evidence, forensic accountant Kenneth Boyd has investigated how people like Trump's Trade Secretary, Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Prince Charles, former UK Finance Minister James Sassoon, as well as several mega corporations, use foreign tax havens to avoid taxes that the rest of us are forced to pay. The network is also approaching the dishonest state of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is worshiped in satan and is criminally accused, say Pentagon sources. On that front, the great kahuna, 9/11, is being taken. Trump's speech on January 8 lasted exactly 9 minutes and 11 seconds. This is a prelude to Trump declaring a national emergency and publishing all 9/11 files, sources say. In addition, a "bill against the BDS drafted by Israel to provide $ 38 billion in aid and punish political speech was defeated twice in the Senate (56-44, 53-43, and needs 60 votes), since it They are making moves to purge the Congress of The Double Israeli Citizens and the Traitors, "say the Pentagon sources. (BDS = Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). In addition, Israel's global boycott is intensifying as "as HSBC Bank disposes of Israeli arms merchant Elbit Systems, Airbnb bans quotations in the West Bank, and Brazil can not move its embassy to Jerusalem," sources say. . Netanyahu's neocon slave boy, John Bolton, "received his wings cut off" by Turkish President Recep Erdoğan and the United States' top general, Joseph Dunford, when he tried last week to stop the United States military withdrawal from the United States. Syria, they added. Meanwhile, the former US Attorney General UU., Jeff Sessions, General James Mattis and General John Kelly lead the military courts with the intelligence backing of the former NSA director, Admiral Mike Rogers and the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mike Flynn , which currently face the aforementioned KKR and Petraeus, the sources say. With the US government UU Now closed for the fourth consecutive week and with no end in sight, the entire world can see that the days of the US Corporation. UU They are numbered. Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Roscosmos Space State Corporation, canceled his planned visit to NASA in February ("it's not a space agency"), because the "second American civil war" is under way. In addition, the fact that the closure of NASA was cut by the closure of the government was undoubtedly a factor in the canceled visit. The closure means that as more and more unpaid prison guards and air traffic controllers get sick, and when food benefits are depleted for the 44 million Americans who depend on them, chaos is coming to the US. UU For the few remaining Kool-Aid drinkers who still believe that the closure of the US government. UU It is about financing a wall already financed, we would like to remind you that EE. UU It has an accumulated trade deficit of more than $ 11 billion, a government deficit of more than 11 billion. $ 22 billion and unfunded liabilities of $ 210 billion, compared to a GDP of $ 19 billion. So, if you make $ 19,000 a year and have debts of $ 243,000, would you want to file for bankruptcy or remain a slave to the impoverished debt for the rest of your life? The White Dragon Society (WDS) and its allies are offering an alternative to the endless bondage of debt. Our proposal is to eliminate immediately, as a singular event, all the debt of the public and private sector. Then, we would redistribute the stolen assets to the people by fraudulent central banks of private property. We estimate that this would mean a single payment equivalent to $ 400,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. In addition, once released from debt slavery, the American people could use their farms, resources, people and factories. , technical knowledge and superior technological skills to create an era of unprecedented prosperity. As for the rest of the world, once the West has nationalized its central banks and eliminated the criminal element of the banking system, it would be possible to carry out a multimillion-dollar campaign to end poverty and stop environmental destruction. This could be done without debt or taxes if an adequate meritocratic governance structure was established. The Chinese project "One Belt One Road", 60 times bigger than the Marshall Plan, is an example of the type of project that the West also needs to start. When the elite of the old guard meet at their Davos love party on February 22, let's see if they offer anything that even comes close to WDS's plan to spend billions of dollars a year to help save the planet. If not, it's time to eliminate your control over the financial system. Humanity must be free to create an ideal future for our planet.

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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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RocketStar ready for second suborbital flight attempt

https://sciencespies.com/space/rocketstar-ready-for-second-suborbital-flight-attempt/

RocketStar ready for second suborbital flight attempt

TAMPA, Fla. — New York-based RocketStar plans to launch its aerospike-powered rocket for the first time this fall, carrying a prototype satellite for resource-mapping startup Lunasonde on a brief suborbital trip.

The 12-meter rocket that RocketStar calls Cowbell aims to reach 21,000 meters on its test flight, depending on final safety requirements from NASA for launching from Launch Complex 48 — a multi-use launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Although RocketStar estimates this mission will only last eight minutes, Lunasonde expects that will be enough time for its onboard subsurface radar imager to collect valuable reflectance data to support its development.

RocketStar had planned to launch Cowbell on its first suborbital launch in early 2019 to test what the company has described as a proprietary aerospike engine. After receiving regulatory approval to launch Cowbell from a floating barge off the coast of Florida, RocketStar canceled the mission three days ahead of liftoff citing safety concerns.

Since then, RocketStar has said little publicly about its plans as it pivoted to what it sees as a safer launch from a pad on dry land.

“Between COVID and finding the right pad, it’s taken that long to adapt the sea-launch idea to a land-based launch,” RocketStar founder Christopher Craddock told SpaceNews.

Debut launch

Craddock said RocketStar decided internally not to broadcast its development progress until after it launched.

“We felt it’d be better to just do it, and then say, ‘OK guys we did our first one, this is what happened, we’d love to see you at the next one,’” he said.

A former Wall Street broker, Craddock founded RocketStar to develop a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) launch vehicle powered by a 3D-printed aerospike engine.

“The current plan is to use a toroidal [aerospike] engine for orbital insertion with our development campaign, and then still using toroidal when we go commercial,” he said.

Aerospike engines, a novel design first tested in the 1960s, were at the heart of NASA’s experimental X-33 suborbital spaceplane program and its envisioned SSTO follow-on VentureStar. However, NASA and Lockheed Martin pulled the plug on X-33 and VentureStar in the early 2000s without finishing or flying either vehicle.

“No aerospike has flown under its own power, pretty much ever, and if it has it’s only been to like 50,000 feet [about 15,000 meters],” Cradock added.

Although RocketStar’s first suborbital launch will take place from land, Craddock said lifting off from sea remains attractive from a “launch cadence perspective.”

The venture also intends to later provide propulsion solutions to other companies.

“It just seems like a good piece of the business we want to chase after, but in no way is going to stop us from going SSTO [single-stage-to-orbit] or creating a small satellite launcher,” he said.

Earth mapping

Lunasonde, which its CEO Jeremiah Pate said is not a paying customer on RocketStar’s inaugural launch, is developing plans for a constellation of satellites that will map resources under the Earth’s surface

Pate said the payload on Cowbell has all the flight hardware of an operational satellite, “with the only major difference being that the power is supplied by the rocket instead of the solar panel” on the spacecraft.

“The technology on this flight works similar to a conventional radar but works at a frequency over 1000 times lower by using our novel metamaterial antenna,” he said in an email.

“This frequency band (VLF/ULF) is what allows us to see deep underground at high resolution.”

Lunasonde has lined up Rocket Lab to launch another satellite to low Earth orbit next year that will be operational, according to Pate, capable of seeing up to 2 kilometers below land surfaces and 500 meters below water.

“The latter satellite will be both a technology demonstration as well as providing underground data to a small number of pilot project customers,” he said.

“This satellite will also be the first satellite in a constellation of subsurface imaging spacecraft, eventually capable of mapping the entire planet down to 10 kilometers on a biweekly basis, providing data to industries such as water resources, mining, and geothermal. Ultimately, this allows us to tap into a completely new dataset that has previously eluded the revolution that earth observation spacecraft have achieved.”

Guarding against new cyber threats

TriSept, a launch integration and mission management specialist that counts U.S. civil, military and intelligence agencies among its customers, also plans to use Cowbell’s suborbital flight to trial software designed to protect satellites against growing cyber threats.

Its newly developed TriSept Secure Embedded Linux (TSEL) software, which the company said can protect large and small satellites from known and emerging vulnerabilities, will serve as the operating system for Lunasonde’s prototype satellite, aiming to test its performance under flight conditions.

TSEL hopes to get full flight heritage next year when it serves as the operating system for the Lunasonde satellite heading to LEO with Rocket Lab.

The software is currently in advanced lab tests and functional trials with Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

TSEL currently needs to be added to satellites before they launch, however, TriSept Rob Spicer CEO told SpaceNews that its next generation could be uploaded to in-orbit, software-defined satellites to bolster security.

Key to TSEL’s automated mechanisms for improving cybersecurity defenses are its “zero trust” verification layers, which the company said gives operators an accurate picture of what is happening on the satellite at all times.

The vast majority of the thousands of small satellites increasingly crowding LEO for communications, Earth imagery and other applications are ill-prepared for increasingly sophisticated security threats, according to Spicer.

#Space

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