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bg-sparrow · 6 months ago

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Introduction

Hi! I'm Erica (BG), and I write fan fiction! I've been writing fic since 2004, and you can find me on AO3 and FFN! As you might have gleaned, I predominantly write Back to the Future fanfic, but I have written for many fandoms over the years!

Side Blogs

This is my main blog, but I have side blogs, too.

@juneofdoom - an annual whump challenge I host because some friends were sad another whump challenge wasn't happening, so I made them a list. Obviously it snowballed.

@piratepianist - Moodboard blog. Colors make me happy, and I express that best through moodboards since I can't draw.

@nopinestimeline - a sideblog I made for my version of Evil!Marty

@bgsbracelets - Thanks to the #bttfbff friendship bracelet exchange, I've gotten so into bracelet making that I'm giving my creations their own sideblog while I set up an Etsy store. This is still very under construction, but if you want to see all the fun fandom bracelets I make, give me a follow!

The Heaviest Back to the Future Trilogy Test

The amount of knowledge I've compiled in researching BttF media for a trilogy rewrite is beyond extensive, and I decided to put some of it to use in this BttF quiz that is actually challenging compared to every other BttF quiz I've ever taken. Have a go! Good luck!

Back to the Future Fan Fiction

Series:

The Time Circuits Series - a trilogy rewrite featuring my OC, Emma Brown, as Doc's daughter and Marty's love interest. This sucker took nine years, but, five works and 273,000 words later, it's done!

Once Upon a Time in the West Series - my version of the "stuck in 1885" AU where Marty's depression and association with Buford Tannen are explored. This four-work saga clocks in at 64,000 words and is now complete.

The Boy Who Leapt Through Time Series - my ongoing McFly July drabble collection.

The Meta of Marty McFly - originally made for the June of Doom whump challenge, this series is an ongoing foray into the ridiculous world of self-insert where I brainstorm fic ideas/ vent at/ torment Marty in my imaginary, infinite office building. It's utter nonsense, and that's why I adore it.

Bhagavad Gita Duology - a history-heavy look at Doc's time on the Manhattan Project, the toll it takes on him, and the mysterious "friend" there at every turn. These two completed stories come in at just under 17,000 words, and they are 17,000 of some of my best, IMO.

BG's Back to the Future Drabbles

This AO3 collection houses all of my bite-sized BttF moments from various challenges on Tumblr and Discord.

The Boy Who Leapt Through Time - McFly July 2022

The Man from the Future - Doctober 2022

In a Kingdom Far, Far Away - Friendship February 2023

The Boy Who Leapt Through Time Again - McFly July 2023

The Boy Who Leapt Through Time Yet Again - McFly July 2021

The Man Who Traveled Time - Doctober 2023

Stand There and Bleed - Whumpril 2024

Multi-chapter

Let's Do the Time Warp Again - Marty's past self gets jumped by Biff's gang at the dance, and Marty has no choice but replace himself at the clocktower, creating a time loop.

Sons and Scientists - an AU in which Marty, stranded in 1940s and living with Doc in Los Alamos, gets drafted into service and there's nothing Doc can do about it. This one hurts, guys. I'm warning you.

By Accident or Design - my version of "the duel goes wrong." This one also hurts. A third and final chapter is being entertained but not certain at this time.

Pennies from Heaven - an Elf/BttF crackfic for Discord Secret Santa 2022. I'm not gonna lie, I had a blast with this, and I'm hella proud of how it turned out. Just go with it!

One Shots

A Fracture in the Space-time Continuum - a sickfic/ injury fic with so much Doc and Marty friendship it's a wonder it hasn't exploded yet. Also affectionately refered to as "Broken Leg Marty".

The Manner of Giving - a 5+1 fic in which Marty tries and fails five times to give Doc a gift (and one time he succeeds).

There's a Time and a Place - No Pine Marty's debut one shot, in which he tells the terrorists where to find Doc the night of the DeLorean Reveal.

Midnight Hour - No Pines Marty visits George in the dead of night to convince him to take Lorraine to the dance.

Stuck in the Stuck in 1885 AU - a silly meta glimpse in which two different Martys from two different “stuck in 1885” stories — daryfromthefuture’s “Until I Get Home” and BG Sparrow’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” — are locked in a room together by their authors to air their grievances. Art by Dary!

Survival is Insufficient

Time Trap

Crime Traveller

The Mystery of the Missing McFly

Roleplays with @daryfromthefuture

These beloved fics feature Dary as Marty and myself as Doc in wholesome, angsty friendship/ sick fics. :)

Lean on Me (When You're Not Strong) - The masterpiece that is Doc seeing Marty through scarlet fever in 1885.

I'll Be There For You (Like I've Been There Before) - Marty glitches, objects at Doc and Clara's wedding, and has a heart-to-heart with Doc about his fears for their future.

I'm Only Me When I'm With You - 1955 sickfic!

Collaborations

Friends Through Time(lines): Chapter 6 - Judge Doc Brown is on the verge of retirment when he meets the child genius renting his garage for the last eighteen months.

Stuck Through Time(lines): 1950s - some first-person Marty reflection on what he's going to do now that he's irrevocably stranded in 1955.

History's Gonna Change: Titanic - Doc and Marty somehow prevent a major historical event from happening and have to ensure it does. I picked the Titanic not sinking!

Back to the Future: Discord - a blind writing game irresponsibly played by the members of our Discord server.

Challenge Masterlists

McFly July 2023

McFly July 2021

Sicktember 2023

Doctober 2023

Comfortember 2023

Whumpril 2024

June of Doom 2024

McFly July 2024

August of Whump 2024 (The Blacklist)

Notable Works in Other Fandoms

Pirates of the Caribbean

Principles of Compromise - Rated T, 64K, drama, Sparrabeth

The Captain - Rated G, 8K, pre-canon Norribeth friendship fluff

Unprecedented Youth - Rated G, 10K, humor, found family

Iron Man (MCU)

These are all Pepperony (Tony/Pepper) and all rated T.

What to Expect When She's Expecting - 4K, pregnancy fic

Extra Dry, Extra Olive - 2K, Tony returns to the roof

For a Decade - 8K, drunken humor/ fluff

Of Toothpaste and Pancakes - 5K, food fight humor/ fluff

Star Wars (Sequel Trilogy)

A Mercy, Tolerant - Rated T, 1200 words, Reylo AU after TFA

Free Space - Rated T, 5K, Reylo bingo card drabbles

National Treasure - Another Clue (Riley/OC, sequel incomplete) Mary Poppins - Under the Weather (sickfic fluff) Jurassic World - Perignon & Paleobotany (pre-canon Claire/Owen) Copying Beethoven - Vibrations on the Air (Anna/Beethoven) Station Eleven - The Pursuit (Kirsten/Tyler) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - As Promised (Major Character Death) The Blacklist - Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Keenler, Undercover Cruise Fic)

BONUS: Multi-Fandom - FFHQ (currently featuring Pirates of the Caribbean, Iron Man, BBC Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, and the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy)

A lot of my older/ other fandom fics on FFN are in the process of being edited for AO3 and will be posted here when that happens!

Thanks for stopping by! And don't be a stranger - feel free to reach out! Have an awesome day! :D

#masterpost #intro post #blog intro #fan fiction #fanfic

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denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

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'It was the early hours of 16 July 1945, and Robert Oppenheimer was waiting in a control bunker for a moment that would change the world. Around 10km (6 miles) away, the world's first atomic bomb test, codenamed "Trinity", was set to proceed in the pale sands of the Jornada del Muerto desert, in New Mexico.

Oppenheimer was a picture of nervous exhaustion. He was always slender, but after three years as director of "Project Y", the scientific arm of the "Manhattan Engineer District" that had designed and built the bomb, his weight had dropped to just over 52kg (115lbs). At 5ft 10in (178cm), this made him extremely thin. He'd slept only four hours that night, kept awake by anxiety and his smoker's cough.

That day in 1945 is one of several pivotal moments in Oppenheimer's life described by the historians Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin in their 2005 biography American Prometheus, which provided the basis for the new movie biopic Oppenheimer, released 21 July in the US.

In the final minutes of the countdown, as Bird and Sherwin report, an army general observed Oppenheimer's mood at close-quarters: "Dr. Oppenheimer... grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed..."

The explosion, when it came, outshone the Sun. With a force matching 21 kilotonnes of TNT, the detonation was the largest ever seen. It created a shockwave that was felt 160km (100 miles) away. As the roar engulfed the landscape and the mushroom cloud rose in the sky, Oppenheimer's expression relaxed into one of "tremendous relief". Minutes later, Oppenheimer's friend and colleague Isidor Rabi caught sight of him from a distance: "I’ll never forget his walk; I’ll never forget the way he stepped out of the car... his walk was like High Noon... this kind of strut. He had done it."

In interviews conducted in the 1960s, Oppenheimer added a layer of gravitas to his reaction, claiming that, in the moments after the detonation, a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, had come into his mind: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

In the following days, his friends reported he seemed increasingly depressed. "Robert got very still and ruminative during that two-week period," one recalled, "because he knew what was about to happen." One morning he was heard lamenting (in condescending terms) the imminent fate of the Japanese: "Those poor little people, those poor little people." But only days later, he was once again nervous, focussed, exacting.

In a meeting with his military counterparts, he seemed to have forgotten all about the "poor little people". According to Bird and Sherwin, he was instead fixated on the importance of the right conditions for the bomb drop: "Of course, they must not drop it in rain or fog… Don’t let them detonate it too high. The figure fixed on is just right. Don’t let it go up [higher] or the target won’t get as much damage." When he announced the successful bombing of Hiroshima to a crowd of his colleagues less than a month after Trinity, one onlooker noticed the way Oppenheimer "clasped and pumped his hand over his head like a victorious prizefighter". The applause "practically raised the roof".

Oppenheimer was the emotional and intellectual heart of the Manhattan Project: more than any other single person he had made the bomb a reality. Jeremy Bernstein, who worked with him after the war, was convinced that nobody else could have done it. As he wrote in his 2004 biography, A Portrait of an Enigma, "If Oppenheimer had not been the director at Los Alamos, I am persuaded that, for better or worse, the Second World War would have ended... without the use of nuclear weapons."

The variety of Oppenheimer's reported reactions as he witnessed the fruition of his labours, not to mention the pace with which he moved through them, might seem bewildering. The combination of nervous fragility, ambition, grandiosity and morbid gloom are hard to square in a single person, especially one so instrumental in the very project provoking these responses.

Bird and Sherwin also call Oppenheimer an "enigma": "A theoretical physicist who displayed the charismatic qualities of a great leader, an aesthete who cultivated ambiguities." A scientist, but also, as another friend once described him "a first-class manipulator of the imagination".

By Bird and Sherwin's account, the contradictions in Oppenheimer's character – the qualities that have left both friends and biographers at a loss to explain him – seem to have been present from his earliest years. Born in New York City in 1904, Oppenheimer was the child of first-generation German Jewish immigrants who had become wealthy through the textiles trade. The family home was a large apartment on the Upper West Side with three maids, a chauffeur, and European art on the walls.

Despite this luxurious upbringing, Oppenheimer was recalled as unspoiled and generous by childhood friends. A school friend, Jane Didisheim, remembered him as someone who "blushed extraordinarily easily", who was "very frail, very pink-cheeked, very shy...", but also "very brilliant". "Very quickly everybody admitted that he was different from all the others and superior," she said.

By the age of nine, he was reading philosophy in Greek and Latin, and was obsessed with mineralogy – roaming Central Park and writing letters to the New York Mineralogical Club about what he found. His letters were so competent that the Club mistook him for an adult and invited him to make a presentation. This intellectual nature contributed to a degree of solitude in the young Oppenheimer, write Bird and Sherwin. "He was usually preoccupied with whatever he was doing or thinking," recalled a friend. He was uninterested in conforming to gender expectations – taking no interest in sports or the "rough and tumble of his age-group" as his cousin put it; "He was often teased and ridiculed for not being like other fellows." But his parents were convinced of his genius.

"I repaid my parents’ confidence in me by developing an unpleasant ego," Oppenheimer later commented, "which I am sure must have affronted both children and adults who were unfortunate enough to come into contact with me." "It’s no fun," he once told another friend, "to turn the pages of a book and say, 'yes, yes, of course, I know that'."

When he left home to study chemistry at Harvard University, the fragility of Oppenheimer's psychological make-up was exposed: his brittle arrogance and thinly-masked sensitivity appearing to serve him poorly. In a letter from 1923, published in a 1980 collection edited by Alice Kimbal Smith and Charles Weiner, he wrote: "I labour and write innumerable theses, notes, poems, stories and junk… I make stenches in three different labs…I serve tea and talk learnedly to a few lost souls, go off for the weekend to distill low grade energy into laughter and exhaustion, read Greek, commit faux pas, search my desk for letters, and wish I were dead. Voila."

Subsequent letters collated by Smith and Weiner reveal that the problems continued through his post-graduate studies, in Cambridge, England. His tutor insisted on applied laboratory work, one of Oppenheimer's weaknesses. "I am having a pretty bad time," he wrote in 1925. "The lab work is a terrible bore, and I am so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything." Later that year, Oppenheimer's intensity led him close to disaster when he deliberately left an apple, poisoned with laboratory chemicals, on his tutor's desk. His friends later speculated he could have been driven by envy and feelings of inadequacy. The tutor didn't eat the apple but Oppenheimer's place at Cambridge was threatened and he kept it only on condition that he see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed psychosis but then wrote him off, saying that treatment would do no good.

Recalling that period, Oppenheimer would later report that he seriously contemplated suicide over the Christmas holidays. The following year, during a visit to Paris, his close friend Francis Fergusson told him he had proposed to his girlfriend. Oppenheimer responded by attempting to strangle him: "He jumped on me from behind with a trunk strap," Fergusson recalled, "and wound it around my neck... I managed to pull aside and he fell on the ground weeping."

It seems that where psychiatry failed Oppenheimer, literature came to the rescue. According to Bird and Sherwin, he read Marcel Proust's A La Recherché du Temps Perdu while on a walking holiday in Corsica, finding in it some reflection of his own state of mind that reassured him and opened a window on a more compassionate mode of being. He learned by heart a passage from the book about "indifference to the sufferings one causes", being "the terrible and permanent form of cruelty". The question of attitude towards suffering would remain an abiding interest, guiding Oppenheimer's interest in spiritual and philosophical texts throughout his life and eventually playing a significant role in the work that would define his reputation. A comment he made to his friends on this same holiday seems prophetic: "The kind of person that I admire most would be one who becomes extraordinarily good at doing a lot of things but still maintains a tear-stained countenance."

He returned to England in lighter spirits, feeling "much kinder and more tolerant", as he later recalled. Early in 1926, he met the director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who quickly became convinced of Oppenheimer's talents as a theoretician, inviting him to study there. According to Smith and Weiner, he later described 1926 as the year of his "coming into physics". It would prove a turning point. He obtained his PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship in the year to follow. He also became part of a community that was driving the development of theoretical physics, meeting scientists who would become life-long friends. Many would ultimately join Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.

Returning to the US, Oppenheimer spent a few months at Harvard before moving to pursue his physics career in California. The tone of his letters from this period reflect a steadier, more generous cast of mind. He wrote to his younger brother about romance, and his ongoing interest in the arts.

At the University of California in Berkeley, he worked closely with experimentalists, interpreting their results on cosmic rays and nuclear disintegration. He later described finding himself "the only one who understood what this was all about". The department he eventually created stemmed, he said, from the need to communicate about the theory he loved: "Explaining first to faculty, staff, and colleagues and then to anyone who would listen ... what had been learned, what the unsolved problems were." He described himself as a "difficult" teacher at first but it was through this role that Oppenheimer honed the charisma and social presence that would carry him during his time at Project Y. Quoted by Smith and Weiner, one colleague recalled how his students "emulated him as best they could. They copied his gestures, his mannerisms, his intonations. He truly influenced their lives."

During the early 1930s, as he strengthened his academic career, Oppenheimer continued to moonlight in the humanities. It was during this period that he discovered the Hindu scriptures, learning Sanskrit in order to read the untranslated Bhagavad Gita – the text from which he later drew the famous '"Now I am become Death" quotation. It seems his interest was not just intellectual, but represented a continuation of the self-prescribed bibliotherapy that had begun with Proust in his 20s. The Bhagavad Gita, a story centred on the war between two arms of an aristocratic family, gave Oppenheimer a philosophical underpinning that was directly applicable to the moral ambiguity he confronted at Project Y. It emphasised ideas of duty, fate and detachment from outcome, emphasising that fear of consequences cannot be used as justification for inaction. In a letter to his brother from 1932, Oppenheimer specifically references the Gita and then names war as one circumstance that might offer the opportunity to put such a philosophy into practice:

"I believe that through discipline... we can achieve serenity... I believe that through discipline we learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances... Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war... ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude; for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace."

In the mid 1930s, Oppenheimer also met Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist and physician with whom he fell in love. By Bird and Sherwin's account, Tatlock's complexity of character equalled Oppenheimer's. She was widely read and driven by a social conscience. She was described by a childhood friend as "touched with greatness". Oppenheimer proposed to Tatlock more than once but she turned him down. She is credited with introducing him to radical politics and to the poetry of John Donne. The pair continued to see each other occasionally after Oppenheimer married the biologist Katherine "Kitty" Harrison in 1940. Kitty was to join Oppenheimer at Project Y, where she worked as a phlebotomist, researching the dangers of radiation.

In 1939, physicists were far more concerned about the nuclear threat than politicians were and it was a letter from Albert Einstein that first brought the matter to the attention of senior leaders in the US government. The reaction was slow, but alarm continued to circulate in the scientific community and eventually the president was persuaded to act. As one of the preeminent physicists in the country, Oppenheimer was one of several scientists appointed to begin looking more seriously into the potential for nuclear weapons. By September 1942, partly thanks to Oppenheimer's team, it was clear that a bomb was possible and concrete plans for its development started to take shape. According to Bird and Sherwin, when he heard that his name was being floated as a leader for this endeavour, Oppenheimer began his own preparations. "I’m cutting off every communist connection," he said to a friend at the time. "For if I don’t, the government will find it difficult to use me. I don’t want to let anything interfere with my usefulness to the nation."

Einstein would later say: "The trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves [something that] doesn’t love him – the United States government." His patriotism and desire to please clearly played a role in his recruitment. General Leslie Groves, the military leader of the Manhattan Engineer District, was the person responsible for finding a scientific director for the bomb project. According to a 2002 biography, Racing for the Bomb, when Groves proposed Oppenheimer as scientific lead, he met with opposition. Oppenheimer's "extreme liberal background" was a concern. But as well as noting his talent and his existing knowledge of the science, Groves also pointed out his "overweening ambition". The Manhattan Project's chief of security also noticed this: "I became convinced that not only was he loyal, but that he would let nothing interfere with the successful accomplishment of his task and thus his place in scientific history."

In the 1988 book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer's friend Isidor Rabi is quoted as saying he thought it "a most improbable appointment", but later conceded it had been "a real stroke of genius on the part of General Groves".

At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer applied his contrarian, interdisciplinary convictions as much as anywhere. In his 1979 autobiography, What Little I Remember, the Austrian-born physicist Otto Frisch recalled that Oppenheimer had recruited not only the scientists required but also "a painter, a philosopher and a few other unlikely characters; he felt that a civilised community would be incomplete without them".

After the war, Oppenheimer's attitude seemed to change . He described nuclear weapons as instruments "of aggression, of surprise, and of terror" and the weapons industry as "the devil's work". At a meeting in October 1945, he famously told President Truman: "I feel I have blood on my hands." The President later said: "I told him the blood was on my hands – to let me worry about that."

The exchange is an arresting echo of one described in Oppenheimer's beloved Bhagavad Gita, between Prince Arjuna and the god Krishna. Arjuna refuses to fight because he believes he will be responsible for the murder of his fellows, but Krishna takes away the burden: "View in me the active slayer of these men... Arise, on fame, on victory, on kingly joys intent! They are already slain by me; be you the instrument."

During the development of the bomb, Oppenheimer had used a similar argument to assuage his own and his colleagues' ethical hesitations. He told them that, as scientists, they were not responsible for decisions about how the weapon should be used – only for doing their job. The blood, if there was any, would be on the hands of the politicians. However, it seems that once the deed was done, Oppenheimer's confidence in this position was shaken. As Bird and Sherwin relate, in his role at the Atomic Energy Commission during the post-war period, he argued against the development of further weapons, including the more powerful hydrogen bomb, which his work had paved the way for.

These efforts resulted in Oppenheimer being investigated by the US government in 1954 and having his security clearance stripped, marking the end of his involvement with policy work. The academic community came to his defence. Writing for The New Republic in 1955, the philosopher Bertrand Russell commented that the "investigation made it undeniable that he has committed mistakes, one of them from a security point of view rather grave. But there was no evidence of disloyalty or of anything that could be considered treasonable... The scientists were caught in a tragic dilemma."

In 1963, the US government presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation, but it wasn't until 2022, 55 years after his death, that the US government overturned its 1954 decision to strip his clearance, and affirmed Oppenheimer's loyalty.

Throughout the last decades of Oppenheimer's life, he maintained parallel expressions of pride at the technical achievement of the bomb and guilt at its effects. A note of resignation also entered his commentary, with him saying more than once that the bomb had simply been inevitable. He spent the last 20 years of his life as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, working alongside Einstein and other physicists.

As at Los Alamos, he made a point of promoting interdisciplinary work and emphasised in his speeches the belief that science needed the humanities in order to better understand its own implications, write Bird and Sherwin. To this end, he recruited a raft of non-scientists including classicists, poets, and psychologists.

He later came to consider atomic energy as a problem that outstripped the intellectual tools of its time, as, in President Truman's words, "a new force too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas". In a speech made in 1965, later published in the 1984 collection Uncommon Sense, he said "I have heard from some of the great men of our time that when they found something startling, they knew it was good, because they were afraid". When talking about moments of unsettling scientific discovery, he was fond of quoting the poet John Donne: "Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone."

John Keats, another poet Oppenheimer enjoyed, coined the phrase "negative capability" to describe a common quality in the people he admired: "that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." It seems as though it was something of this that the philosopher Russell was getting at when he wrote of Oppenheimer's "inability to see things simply, an inability which is not surprising in one possessed of a complex and delicate mental apparatus." In describing Oppenheimer's contradictions, his mutability, his continual running between poetry and science, his habit of defying simple description, perhaps we are identifying the very qualities that made him capable of pursuing the creation of the bomb.

Even in the midst of this great and terrible pursuit, Oppenheimer kept alive the "tear stained countenance" he had foretold in his 20s. The name of the "Trinity" test is thought to have come from the John Donne poem Batter my heart, three-person'd God: "That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend/Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new." Jean Tatlock, who had introduced him to Donne, and with whom he is thought by some to have remained in love, had committed suicide the year before the test. The bomb project was marked everywhere by Oppenheimer's imagination, and by his sense of romance and tragedy. Perhaps it was overweening ambition that General Groves identified when he interviewed Oppenheimer for the job at Project Y, or perhaps it was his ability to adopt, for the time required, the idea of overweening ambition. As much as it was the result of research, the bomb was the product of Oppenheimer's ability and willingness to imagine himself as the kind of a person that could make it happen.

A chain smoker since adolescence, Oppenheimer suffered bouts of tuberculosis during his life. He died of throat cancer in 1967, at the age of 62. Two years before his death, in a rare moment of simplicity, he drew a distinction that marked out the practice of science from that of poetry. Unlike poetry, he said, "science is the business of learning not to make the same mistake again".'

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thelovelygods · 2 years ago

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tagged by @ravenkings 😘 (godspeed grading those last few papers)

nickname: none

sign: capricorn

height: 5′4

last thing i googled: post.news (just got approved to join the beta version!)

song stuck in my head: nothing at the moment, but three songs i’ve had on repeat lately are “mr. badman” by cruel youth, “anti-hero” by taylor swift, and “now i’m in it” by haim

number of followers: 339

amount of sleep: probably around 6 hours

lucky number: 47

dream job: i’d like to work in a museum/library/archive and do some writing on the side

wearing: green turtleneck and brown leggings

movies/books that summarize me

(i’m just gonna go nuts here and list all my faves, sorry)

books:

the red tent by anita diamant

the dovekeepers by alice hoffman

the book of longings by sue monk kidd

the dream of scipio by iain pears

the winter people by jennifer mcmahon

the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden

the legend of holly claus by brittney ryan

inkheart by cornelia funke

song of the sparrow by lisa ann-sandell

fire bringer by david clement-davies

island of ghosts by gillian bradshaw

movies:

the red tent (2014)

ready or not (2019)

troll (2022)

you won’t be alone (2022)

only lovers left alive (2013)

agora (2009)

amazing grace (2006)

one night with the king (2004)

o brother where art thou (2000)

the last king (2016)

the physician (2013)

the patriot (2000)

the alamo (2004)

favorite song: literally no way i could pick

favorite instrument: honestly, the synthesizer <--- same i think

aesthetic: bohemian mixed with like...office casual. my mom says i have a “classic” style, whatever that means

favorite author: jennifer mcmahon

favorite animal noise: no idea

random: looking forward to streaming the invitation (2022) on christmas eve 👀

tagging @a-hulder and @blood-and-bile

#asks

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jcmarchi · 2 months ago

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MIT OpenCourseWare sparks the joy of deep understanding

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-opencourseware-sparks-the-joy-of-deep-understanding/

MIT OpenCourseWare sparks the joy of deep understanding

From a young age, Doğa Kürkçüoğlu heard his father, a math teacher, say that learning should be about understanding and real-world applications rather than memorization. But it wasn’t until he began exploring MIT OpenCourseWare in 2004 that Kürkçüoğlu experienced what it means to truly understand complex subject matter.

“MIT professors showed me how to look at a concept from different angles that I hadn’t before, and that helped me internalize information,” says Kürkçüoğlu, who turned to MIT OpenCourseWare to supplement what he was learning as an undergraduate studying physics. “Once I understood techniques and concepts, I was able to apply them in different disciplines. Even now, there are many equations I don’t have memorized exactly, but because I understand the underlying ideas, I can derive them myself in just a few minutes.”

Though there was a point in his life when friends and classmates thought he might pursue music, Kürkçüoğlu — a skilled violinist who currently plays in a jazz band on the side — always had a passion for math and physics and was determined to learn everything he could to pursue the career he imagined for himself.

“Even when I was 4 or 5 years old, if someone asked me, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ I would say a scientist or mathematician,” says Kürkçüoğlu, who is now a staff scientist at Fermilab in the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center. Fermilab is the U.S. Department of Energy laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. “I feel lucky that I actually get to do the job I imagined as a little kid,” Kürkçüoğlu says.

OpenCourseWare and other resources from MIT Open Learning — including courses, lectures, written guides, and problem sets — played an important role in Kürkçüoğlu’s learning journey and career. He turned to these open educational resources throughout his undergraduate studies at Marmara University in Turkey. When he completed his degree in 2008, Kürkçüoğlu set his sights on a PhD. He says he felt ready to dive right into doctoral-level research thanks to so many MIT OpenCourseWare lectures, courses, and study guides. He started a PhD program at Georgia Tech, where his research focused on theoretical condensed matter physics with ultra-cold atoms.

“Without OpenCourseWare, I could not have done that,” he says, adding that he considers himself “an honorary MIT graduate.”

Memorable courses include particle physics with Iain W. Stewart, the Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professorship in Science Professor of Physics and director of the Center for Theoretical Physics; and Statistical Mechanics of Fields with Mehran Kardar, professor of physics. Learning from Kardar felt especially apt, because Kürkçüoğlu’s undergraduate advisor, Nihat Berker, was Kardar’s PhD advisor. Berker is also emeritus professor of physics at MIT.

Once he completed his PhD in 2015, Kürkçüoğlu spent time as an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University and a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He joined Fermilab in 2020. There, he works on quantum theory and quantum algorithms. He enjoys the research-focused atmosphere of a national laboratory, where teams of scientists are working toward tangible goals.

When he was teaching, though, he encouraged his students to check out Open Learning resources.

“I would tell them, first of all, to have fun. Learning should be fun — another idea that my father always encouraged as a math teacher. With OpenCourseWare, you can get a new perspective on something you already know about, or open a course that can expand your horizons,” Kürkçüoğlu says. “Depending on where you start, it might take you an hour, a week, or a month to fully understand something. Once you understand, it’s yours. It is a different kind of joy to actually, truly understand.”

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cleoenfaserum · 3 months ago

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LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008) dir. Tomas Alfredson

Do you wanna be my girlfriend? Oskar ... I'm not a girl. OH ... But do you want to go steady or not?

Can't we just keep things the way they are? I guess...

Do you do anything special when you go steady? NO. So, everything is the same? YES.

Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay.

Let me just say that the Swedish original and the USA version of the film, in which both films can be enjoyed here, are both excellently produced and portrayed. The American version follows very closely the Swedish original, yet it has a slightly different twist which makes it equally enjoyable, in spite of the monstrosity. It is a vampire movie but nonetheless a captivating one, so much so for the beauty and romance of two inocente 12 year old children who are awakening to the intríncate nuance of love. To conclude, watch both film consecutively, it will be a rewarding experience.

The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a strange child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s. However, the focus of the film is primarily on the relationship between the two main characters while exploring the darker side of humanity. Let the Right One In (film) - Wikipedia

English dubbed subtitled in a foreign language. Just disregard the subtitles.

1070link https://ok.ru/video/32634505865

Original version subtitled in English.

link https://ok.ru/video/6746375654099

Source: amatesura

THE AMERICAN VERSION ...

Let Me In is a 2010 romantic horror film written and directed by Matt Reeves. It is a remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In, which was based on the 2004 novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist. The plot follows a bullied 12-year-old boy who befriends and develops a romantic relationship with a child vampire girl in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the early 1980s. Let Me In (film) - Wikipedia

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theweirdspacejellyfish · 5 months ago

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Old animated movie/ shows you should watch!

Pom poko 1994 - movie

Summary: raccoons of the tama hills are being forced their homes by the rapid development of houses and shopping malls. As it becomes harder to find food and shelter, they decide to band together and fight back. The raccoons practice and perfect the ancient art of transformation until they are even able to appear as humans in hilarious circumstances

City Hunter 1987 - 4 seasons

Summary: ryo saeba works the streets of Tokyo as the city Hunter. He’s a “sweeper” and with his sidekick kaori makimura, he keeps the city clean. People hire the city Hunter to solve their dangerous problems, which he does with a colt python. When ryos not working on a case, he’s working on getting the ladies, and kaori must keep him in check with her trusty 10 kg hammer

Freakazoid! 1995 - 2 seaons

Summary: the adventures of the title character, freakazoid, a manic, insane superhero who battles with an array of super villains

Gargoyles 1994 - 3 seasons

Summary: a adaptation of the video game and comic

Jackie chan adventures 2000 - 5 seasons

Summary: American animated television series chronicling the adventures of a fictionalized version of action film star Jackie chan

Vampire Hunter D: bloodlust 2000 - movie

Summary: D has been hired to track down Meier Link, a notoriously powerful vampire who had abducted a woman, Charlotte Elbourne. D’s orders are strict- find Charlotte, at any cost: for the first time, D faces serious completion. The Markus Brothers, a family of vampire hunters, were hired at for the same bounty. D must intercept Meier and conquer hostile forces on all sides in a deadly race against time

The Oblongs 2001 - 2 seaons

Summary:

Dave the barbarian 2004 - 2 seasons

Summary: the show follows a barbarian named Dave, his sisters, uncle, talking sword, and pet dragon on their daily adventures

Class of the titans 2005 - 2 seasons

Summary:

Devil may cry 2007 - 1 season

Summary: the adventures of the demon Hunter Dante who himself is a half demon and half human

The stinky crow show 2008 - 1 season

Summary: based on the comic strip Maakies

Stoked 2009 - 2 seasons

Summary:

Firebreather 2010 - movie

Summary: it’s not easy being a teen like Duncan. His mom wants him to pay more attention to his homework, while his dad - a 120 foot tall monster known as a kaiju - wants him to become the next king of all monsters. When these worlds collide, Duncan must use his human wits and his kaiju powers - including super strength, ability and the ability to breathe fire - to protect his family and friends from a giant monster rampage

Wolverine 2011 - 1 season

Summary: Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal keen senses, enchanted psychical capabilities, three retracting bone claws on each hand and a healing factor that allows him to recover from virtually any wound, disease or toxin at a accelerated rate

Alamo’s naked animals 2011 - 2 seasons

Summary: underwear clad animals led by house the canine run the beachfront hotel banana cabana, leading to mayhem destruction and tons of all around fun

Supernatural: the animation 2011 - 1 season

Summary: after losing their mother to a demon, two brothers grow up fighting supernatural beings

#tv recommendations #movie recommendation

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ruzqtx · 2 months ago

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“ despite everything, it’s still you. ”

———

flynn’s life won’t ever go back to how it was after february 24th, 1836.

i promise this will make more sense after the lore drop but for now i keep making cliffhangers 😈😈😈

runs away and squawks like an eagle 🦅

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toastkidjp · 6 months ago

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約20年前に先生が観たと言っていたアラモ砦の映画はどっちか？

2024/5/31 の基準価額より

評価額は7,271,739円、評価損益は2,322,042円(+31.93%)だった。

指数

S&P 500は0.80%の上昇、VIX 終値は 12.92 だった。

昨日は MSCI のリバランスがあった影響でプライム市場の商いが7兆円規模に膨らんだ。7兆円台は記憶にない。

アングル：巨額介入で投機のドル買い抑制、円安は対ドル以外で活発に | ロイター

事前の報道とほぼ同規模で、この手のプロはさすがだと感じる。

『アラモ(原題：THE ALAMO)』(2004年、アメリカ合衆国)

午後のロードショー(関東ローカル)で放送されていた。

この映画はアラモ砦の戦いだけでは終わらず、サンタ・アナとヒューストンの決戦まで描いている。 40分ほどカットされた都合で砦の戦いが始まってCMに入り、「戦いの行方は」と出てからCMが開けるとほぼ決着していて、何が起こったのかと思った。

私が高校生の頃、数学の先生が「アラモ砦の映画を観た」と話していた。それはジョン・ウェインの方ではなくこっちだったのかもしれない。

上記の固有名詞は私の推奨ではない。自分の資産は自分の判断と責任で運用しなければいけない。

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laresearchette · 10 months ago

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Thursday, February 01, 2024 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: AFRICA RISING WITH AFUA HIRSCH (BritBox) THREE LITTLE BIRDS (BritBox) CLONE HIGH (Crave TV) A BLOODY LUCKY DAY (Paramount+ Canada) FARMER WANTS A WIFE (CTV) 9:00pm THERESA CAPUTO: RAISING SPIRITS (Lifetime Canada) 9:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT: GENIUS: MLK/X (ABC Feed; Premiering on February 04 on Nat Geo Canada at 9:00pm)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA 12 ANGRY MEN (1957) THE ALAMO (1960) ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN 2 (1996) ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001) ANNIE HALL (1977) BASEKETBALL (1998) BASIC INSTINCT (1992) BLADES OF GLORY (2007) THE BOUNTY (1984) CHORUS LINE (1985) THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004) COP LAND (1997) THE CORE (2003) THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE (2002) EAT PRAY LOVE (2010) THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (2005) EVENT HORIZON (1997) FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971) FROM BEYOND (1986) GANG RELATED (1997) GET OUT (2017) GHOST WORLD (2001) THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1979) GROWN UPS (2010) GROWN UPS 2 (2013) HAIR (1979) HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER (1998) HOT FUZZ (2007) I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2017) IN THE CUT (2003) JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 (2003) JUST FRIENDS (2005) KISS THE GIRLS (1997) LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER (1982) LIFE (2017) THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1977) MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA (2008) MY LEFT FOOT (1990) THE PEACEMAKER (1997) QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER (1990) RED ROCKET (2021) REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS (1985) RIDDICK (2013) RIDE ALONG (2014) SARAFINA! (1992) SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010) SCREAM (1996) SCREAM 2 (1997) THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982) SHREK FOREVER AFTER (2010) SNAKE EYES (1998) SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL (1987) THE SWEETEST THING (2002) TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (2006) THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) YOUNG ADULT (2011)

CBC GEM LE MYTHE DE LA FEMME NOIRE MASTERS OF SEX: (Season 1) ON THE LINE: THE RICHARD WILLIAMS STORY

CRAVE TV 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU BOYZ N’ THE HOOD CLONE HIGH (Season 2 Premiere) THIS LIFE THOSE LEFT BEHIND

DISNEY + STAR LOVE & WWE: BIANCA & MONTEZ (Season 1) PIXAR’S SELF

NETFLIX CANADA THE 5TH WAVE THE BIG SICK BOYZ N THE HOOD EAT PRAY LOVE FAME AFTER FAME HAPPY FEET HOME ALONE HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK HOUSE, M.D. (Seasons 1-8) IN A WORLD… LITTLE WOMEN (1994) MINIONS MR. DEEDS SALVES QUIEN PUEDAL (ES) SEVEN THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION THE SKELETON TWINS THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU TUSK

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 6:00pm: NHL All-Star Thursday

NBA BASKETBALL (SN1) 7:30pm: Pacers vs. Knicks (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 7:30pm: Lakers vs. Celtics (SN1) 10:00pm: 76ers vs. Jazz

DRAGONS’ DEN (CBC) 8:00pm (SEASON FINALE): Catching up with 13 companies that braved the dragons to find out what happens after the Den; the dragons discuss the key takeaways from the show and what its legacy means to them.

ALMOST PARADISE (CTV2) 8:00pm: Alex's ex-wife shows up with her new fiancé asking Alex to sign their divorce papers; however, when the fiancé is mistaken for Alex and kidnapped by an old enemy, Alex finds himself racing to rescue the man.

HOLMES FAMILY RESCUE (CTV Life) 8:00pm: A family is left financially drained and with an unfinished, dangerous mess after a contractor abandoned their two-story addition project; Mike, Sherry and Michael must contend with the triple threat of plumbing, electrical and HVAC issues.

THE NATURE OF THINGS (CBC) 9:00pm: A pristine river in Quebec is granted rights through legal personhood, protecting it and those who call it home.

FOR THE LOVE OF CHOCOLATE (Super Channel Heart & Home) 9:30pm: Preparing for the annual Masters of Chocolate Festival, Aria's plans get rattled when she loses her partner shortly before the competition. However, a dashing single father soon steps in to help Aria find the winning ingredient.

CANADIAN REFLECTIONS (CBC) 11:30pm: Tiny; 541: A Place for the Community

#cdntv #cancon #canadian tv #canadian tv listings #dragons den #almost paradise #holmes family rescue #the nature of things #canadian reflections #nhl hockey #nba basketball

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deadlinecom · 1 year ago

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richdadpoor · 1 year ago

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‘Oldboy’, ‘Mutt’ And Metallica – Deadline

Re-releases reliably dot the theatrical calendar and this week have a standout. Oldboy, the 2004 Cannes prize-winner, re-released by Neon on its 20th anniversary restored and remastered, grossed $235k on Wednesday and $150k Thursday — for a total cume $385k on 250 screens heading into the weekend. San Francisco, NYC and LA, led by Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, are the top-performing cities so far…

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denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

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'Out of the blue in 2011, I received an email from a historian at the Los Alamos Historical Society in New Mexico. She said that because I was a descendant of settlers on the Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico in the decades before World War II, I was entitled to receive a history book commissioned by Congress.

It was part of an effort to make amends for the government’s abrupt seizure of the land in 1942 to build the Los Alamos laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was developed.

I was dumbfounded.

When I was growing up, neither my father nor my grandmother, Constance Smithwick, ever said a word to me about having lived in New Mexico. My mother, who was only briefly married to my father, rarely spoke of him. And both my parents and grandmother died in the late 1970s, so their stories were lost to me. When the Los Alamos historian asked me if I had any photos or stories about my family’s life in the area, I said I had nothing to share.

The book, “Homesteaders on the Pajarito Plateau, 1887-1942,” arrived a short time later.

Reading the parts about my family only deepened the mystery of the silence of my father and grandmother about their lives on the plateau. But it clarified historical aspects of their story, including issues of power, race, privilege and loss made newly relevant by the movie “Oppenheimer.”

In the American West, homesteaders on government land, by law, became owners of their land after at least five years of farming, ranching or otherwise improving the acreage. The Pajarito Plateau, a high-altitude volcanic region of mesas and canyons, had a settler community. Hispanic farmers and ranchers, many whose families had lived there for generations, owned most of the few dozen homesteads, which ranged from 10 to 160 acres. The land was semi-arid, water was scarce, and the growing season was short. But by no means was the land vacant when the government chose the area for the Los Alamos facility and evicted the people.

My grandparents, of Irish descent, were part of that community. Starting in 1921, they lived on and managed the plateau’s Anchor Ranch, a 320-acre spread. The ranch was owned by the Ross family of New York. In exchange for providing care at the ranch for a mentally disabled son of that family, my grandparents had run of the place. They are credited with creating a viable enterprise and improving some of the roads that ran through the canyons.

They left the plateau in 1937 due to my grandfather Francis’ failing health and relocated to Desert Hot Springs in California, another off-the-grid location in those days. Any hope my grandmother may have had to return to Anchor Ranch was dashed in 1942, when the Rosses sold the land to the U.S. government for $43 an acre.

That transaction was later cited in a petition to the U.S. government by the descendants of Hispanic homesteaders who sought reparations because their relatives were paid as little as $7 an acre for their land. In 2004, when Congress established a $10-million fund to repay the descendants, the settlement included a provision to create the book I received.

Although everything the Los Alamos historian wrote in her email was news to me, it jogged my memory.

When my grandmother died in 1977, I was given a box labeled “Connie’s stuff” by the person who had gathered her belongings. I never looked through it. But during a move in the mid-1990s, the box buckled and a large manila envelope spilled its contents. There were photos of log cabins, children playing with puppies, women on horseback, picnics, sledding. Having never heard my father or grandmother say anything remotely related to these images, I put the photos into a new box and stored it in the garage.

I took another look in 2011, after the email from the Los Alamos historian. I spread my grandmother’s papers on my living room floor, and there, along with the pictures, was a tattered clipping from the Los Alamos Times of an interview with Constance in 1947 entitled “Mesa Old Timer Recalls Pre-Atom Project Period.”

The interviewer asked Constance how she felt visiting the Pajarito Plateau, now unrecognizable and the site of the “unfolding of the most revolutionary development in the history of the world — the atomic power project.”

“I have no resentment whatsoever that my old world here has been turned upside down by all of this,” she said. When I knew her, my grandmother was anything but accepting.

In the interview, Constance described their happy and harsh life on Anchor Ranch. She referred to her family as pioneers who built cabins, raised horses and cattle, grew alfalfa, hunted, fished, went sledding after brutal snowstorms and attended “gala affairs where women rode to parties on horseback in their elegant finery with their dancing shoes in their saddlebags.” The family had a passion for dogs — Airedales and St. Bernards. In her telling, life was a long, wholesome, outdoor adventure.

All of it only raised more questions for me. If life at Anchor Ranch was so idyllic, why did she never tell me about it? Why did my father maintain a lifelong silence on the topic?

In 2021, I was invited by the Los Alamos Historical Society to visit the Pajarito Plateau. The historian showed me the pond on the site of Anchor Ranch where my father would have gone swimming and the foundations of cabins my grandparents built. I was shown records of phone calls (a luxury at the time), shopping lists and accounting records in my grandmother’s loopy handwriting.

I still can’t reconcile the evidence of their lives on the Pajarito Plateau with their later lives. But I did come away with a sense of the inscrutable spirit of the plateau, a mix of beauty and horror. I have also come to understand the power of secrecy.

Secrecy is a theme of “Oppenheimer.” It was the bedrock of the Manhattan Project. It is also the blanket my father and grandmother wrapped around their lives on the Pajarito Plateau, leaving me to piece together their story and mine. I am still at it, trying to fill in the blanks left by their silence about that strange era and place.'

#Oppenheimer #Pajarito Plateau #Los Alamos #Anchor Ranch

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