#FriendPresent

[nordarknessdimsthesky]

O life surrounding me Sweet mystery In everything I see Come and find me in the garden Come and find me in the garden

[sciencefordragons]

23, 37

oh my GOD this was so FUN

The first, a clandestine forest ritual! So named “we float on inches of air”:

https://pin.it/qwjrhugatav4ka

The second, within the theme ‘dark academia’! So named “the night class”:

https://pin.it/d5p3dqu2yoptr7

thank you for the ask, dearest!!

[earlgraytay]

to do today- hold me to this, tumblr gang: 

- I’m trying out @copperbadge​‘s Four Royal Advisors tarot reading. Kinda scared- I’ve mostly only dabbled in tarot before, never done a reading this size, it covers just about all the space i’ve got on my living room floor. I’m also using the Homestuck Tarot deck, which has a habit of roasting me, so... 

- put in a load of laundry. i need socks badly. 

- make goals for the new year- long-term and short term- and figure out what I’m doing this week

- work on Alternative Curvy My Scene and maybe on Suga if I get the spoons for it

- start boxing up friendpresents of various stripes-- Nine is just about as good as I’m gonna get her, unfortunately, and I have a whole bunch of other stuff I need to get to

- start doll census? 

[lovelyangiechu]

Pretty new makeup from a wonderful new friend! Thanks, Phoenix :) #makeup #throughthelookingglass #eyeshadow #eyeshadowpalette #funcolours #funwithmakeup #gifts #friendpresent #makeuponfleek #alice #aliceinwonderland #throughthelookingglasspalette

[misstardis19]

#drawing #JaceandClary #clace #clacemoment #shadowhunters #painting #gift #friendpresent #nephilim #rune #angelicpower #➰ #love

[furyofthunder]

Hot chocolate before bed .. and some Christmas cookies!! Thank u @icarvajal10 for this awesome and delicious present! #BearBears #Escandalosos #FriendPresent #HotChocolate #Christmas (em Mercedes Norte, Heredia, Costa Rica) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrzGYfQHZ99/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1jsks9bjddldx

[sciencefordragons]

Top 5 dragons and top 5 science

ohohohohoHOOOO ~rubs hands together~ sO

DRAGONS (in no particular order of favoritism)

1.) The Kind People from Kill Six Billion Demons. They are a race of Servants created to be porters, couriers, and guards. The one below is Mammon, and he has been outcast from his kind due to his unnatural ambition. I’m…fully obsessed with this comic and I find Mammon’s backstory and position as a major god of the Seven-Part World fascinating.

2.) This person really has character creation nailed DOWN and it’s so impressive. I shout “BA!” to myself every once in awhile thinking about these guys. https://theveryworstthing.tumblr.com/post/182900691873/anoki-wanted-me-to-think-up-some-tiny-things-that

3.) all of the dragons drawn by Stutterhug, but most especially these two: https://stutterhug.tumblr.com/post/144309575002/ignition-trouble-full-disclosure-i-might-have

4.) I stumbled on this person’s art and I love their Rin so much, she’s small and wily and a big bastard: https://pocketss.tumblr.com/post/167851545251/is-there-anything-rin-wont-eat and https://pocketss.tumblr.com/post/167602882691/rin-is-small-and-bitter-and-bad-at-carrying

5.) Haku from Spirited Away, big soft river dragon boy:

I love pretty much anything that portrays dragons as friends, bc I think dragons would be friends.

NOW, SCIENCE (’m gonna try to make these not all astro but might not win)

1.) Okay so data sonification is super fucking cool, and some NASA scientists did this with an image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field! Almost all of the data we use in astronomy is visual, so it’s great for accessibility reasons that we’re thinking of other ways to interact with astro data!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Ci_YwfH04

2.) This video of a “cannonball pulsar”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pGXqrovaFo&list=PLVn7j0daoTIJ2u8yqVrJ5HmXFyHwgZKlk&index=2&t=0s

3.) okay so gravitational lensing is pretty sick. Gravitational lensing describes the effect a massive object in space has on the light that travels past it. Light is affected by gravity, so sometimes a heavy object bends the light from something behind it and changes its path. Thanks to this we can sometimes see light from objects directly behind something really heavy! This image shows how the path of light from a galaxy changes as it travels through space!

4.) The Event Horizon image taken just over a month ago. I don’t know how well it reached the general public that this was an incredible breakthrough: the array of radio telescopes that collected all the data to turn into this image covered the surface area of the entire earth! So like, imagine a telescope with a mirror the diameter of the earth, except radio astronomy is weird as hell. We took an actual picture of the shadow of a black hole. Any time we do anything that makes the universe a little clearer, my heart flutters a little.

5.) So I did a project on this once, there’s a really cool thing you can do to show what the large-scale structure of the universe looks like. If you look at an image of all the galaxies that can be detected in the sky without worrying about how far away from us they are, it looks like they’re pretty uniformly distributed across the sky. Maybe there are some clumps here or there, but not much. When you take redshift into account (you can sorta correlate redshift to distance from us, the observer), you can see that light matter in the universe actually gathers in filaments, like this:

Look at that!! You can see that galaxies (the green, yellow, and red parts) gather in filaments that stretch across massive distances, and in between them are what are called void bubbles!! There are some really interesting things that have been noticed from images like this one, namely that elliptical galaxies (aka the blobby ones) tend to be in the red areas, where a lot of galaxy mergers occur. Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way tend to be found far away from other galaxies. The theory is that elliptical galaxies have had their structure disrupted by crashing into other galaxies, whereas spiral galaxies still look like spirals because they haven’t crashed into other galaxies.

Thank you so much for this ask, this was so much fun!!!!

[sciencefordragons]

Automattic: Best item you’ve found at a yard sale/secondhand store? | Staff: Is there any advice you wish you’d listened to, but never did?

Automattic: WELL. Do YOU know the story of the long red pirate coat I found at goodwill for five dollars that has served me immensely well for several years? No?? We’ll go with no.

Look at this coat. Look at this outfit. My god. This was from my first LARP! How times have changed. This was so many years ago and I have Learned Some Things about costuming. But this COAT. What an absolute glory. This picture doesn’t do it justice.

Look upon baby Kira.

___

Staff: Oh goodness, probably. The thing that comes to mind is that brand of post that says the gays must submit to the mortifying experience of being known if they’re to find love and joy? Like you have to be vulnerable to find love? That’s actually really good advice. And something I’m struggling with right now!

This is a hard one! I think the way that I think of advice is sort of like how I think of a present someone has given me. Like I will most likely internalize it in some way. Though I also know when advice is trash and should be discarded immediately. I’m a dumbass bastard but like, a considerate one.

Thank you for the ask, dear!!

[sciencefordragons]

Ads, Automattic

Ads: Dumbest thing you’ve done for attention?

Oh god I really don’t know...probably something in high school, over a crush. Which of course is a very understandable thing to do, but even now I sometimes want to look baby me in the face and go, “do you know that you’re very impressive by yourself without pretending at anything and anyone would be lucky to have a conversation with you?”

Automattic: Best item you’ve found at a yard sale/secondhand store?

Let me think about this, because I think you’d probably guess my answer to be that floor-length red coat with the black velvet trim, and you’d be correct.

Actually...my current work table/desk cost $10 at a surplus store and it’s just like a woodshop table or something, but it’s turned into such a lovely space in my room and I’m just so pleased about it. Here is said desk, obviously covered in plants and other things.

Thank you for the ask, dearest!! <3

[sciencefordragons]

the Devil, the World

!!! well hello!!!

I already answered the devil’s prompt in the ask from eldritchwyrm, so I’ll refer you to that ask! (it should be just below this one)

the world: do you like waking up early?

I do! I have a hard time of it, though. I really like being awake when most of the world is still asleep, and the earlier I wake up the better I feel about tackling the coming day. I love the colors of the sunrise, especially out in the desert when you gotta take every not-bone-drying hour you can get. Mornings can just be a very soft time, and if I was better at my sleep habits I’d take advantage of them more.

Thank you so much for the ask!! <3

[sciencefordragons]

tarot questions -- the devil?

the devil: do you enjoy thunderstorms?

my DEAR, I am woefully ill-equipped to express how much I love thunderstorms. Like I wish I could somehow show everyone how wonderful the desert smells after/during a thunderstorm, it’s the most emotionally filling smell I’ve ever experienced. It feels like river mud is settling in your lungs and you could just sink into the ground and go back to what you were made of in the first place.

Best thunderstorm I’ve ever experienced was during the summer before senior year of high school. I was staying up really late, like 2am late, to work on an online physics class, and took a break to go walk around in the rain out the backdoor. The rain was very gentle but steady and felt surprisingly warm, and suddenly I looked to the northern bluffs and a massive, roaring rumble that sounded like the announcement of the arrival of the god of all creation went off and the entire sky went blinding white for a second. I took that as a sign that if I stayed outside any longer I would be vaporized on the spot and decided I wanted to live on in the safety of my house.

Thank you for this ask!!! <3

[sciencefordragons]

What would you wear as a vampire deity to dance the night away at the fae's royal masque in the garden of the castle ruins on the moon?

the LENGTHS i went to, okay here we GO

[sciencefordragons]

wheel of fortune: first three songs that come on shuffle? | death: what are three things you want to do before you die? | temperance: can you describe a strange dream you’ve had?

wheel of fortune: oh this is absolutely fascinating, so for reference I went into “Liked Songs” on Spotify, which I treat as a sort of “Listen Later” playlist

1.) Where’d U Go - Illenium/Said the Sky

2.) Some of My Best Friends are Windows - Squalloscope

3.) Better Than That - MARINA

death: I have a hard time thinking of my long-term future, but man, if it can be anything...

1.) Learn to play the guitar as beautifully as my favorite music artist, Yvette Young

2.) Adopt kids and teach them how to harbor hope.

3.) I’d love to go into space and just be able to see how small and fragile the earth is, but also be able to look out into the vastness of space in the clearest place to see it.

temperance:

I think the strangest one I’ve had was a horror dream, and it’s particularly strange because I had it more than once when I was small, like five or six years old. I was basically zooming through a sequence of darkened rooms, pausing over a movie theater and a living room in particular. In the movie theater, it looked like a crowd had just run out in a panic and there was stuff thrown all over the walls. I finally got stuck in the living room, and a shadow casts across the wall. I try to make myself move to hide behind the couch, but I’m too slow. The monster (that looks sort of grinch-like with tusks) comes in and goes to bite my head off, and then I wake up.

Thank you for this ask!!!

[sciencefordragons]

2,18,24,28,85?

2. chocolate bars or lollipops?

Chocolate bars! I’m a huge sucker for letting squares of chocolate just melt in my mouth. I love hershey’s milk chocolate bars and I have since I was little.

18. ideal weather?

Ooh I’m gonna pick a different one for this. I really love when there are stormclouds all around on the horizon in the summer but you’re under the clear sky in the middle, and you can see sunbeams blazing across the sky and the air is cool, almost electric. Ideal if you are driving with the windows down and the rush is turning you into a beaming conduit.

24. favorite crystal?

I love…opals…glitter…shine…rainbow….dragon eggs….I also have one in each ear and I pretend they can store magic in them for later!!

28. five songs to describe you?

aha! I will choose five more!

blinding - florence + the machine | the unwinding cable car - anberlin | space girl - the imagined village | teach me to fight - yonaka | keeping warm - we were promised jetpacks

85. fairy tales or mythology?

Man…I love both tbh, but I think I gravitate toward mythology more? I love stories about having the courage to challenge and outsmart the gods, because I think they teach us that gods are created out of our own fears and desires and wills to explain the universe to ourselves through stories. I know gods are thought to be immortal, but they seem more changeable and ever-morphing to me, more like reincarnation than immortality, which I prefer. Fae are often too powerful and don’t change enough for my taste.

Thank you so much for this ask!! <3

[sciencefordragons]

18. ideal weather? | 23. strange habits? | 29. best way to bond with you? | 67. good luck charms? | 77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

oooooooooh these are good ones!!!

18. ideal weather?

this depends, if it’s daytime I really love grey, warmer days in winter where all sounds are dulled by the snow and the clouds are really close. I get really excited for snowstorms because they happened so rarely back home, so they’re still very new to me. I love weather that shuts everything down so the world gets quieter.

23. strange habits?

I actually had to ask a friend about the first two bc I don’t think about this! The notable ones are:

- I will stop and stare at shiny things like bottles I find in the street, which can make walking with me a bit of a stutter-start affair.  

- I don’t really operate on a time schedule, I just sorta do what needs to get done. 

- I will look at any reflective surface I pass while walking to check my reflection. I’m not exactly sure why I do this, but I consider it part of the same logic of why I don’t ever want to own a full-length mirror.

29.) best way to bond with you?

Ooh boy!! it’s very hard to answer, but this is a really good one!! I’ll do my best! 

So…I don’t really consider myself that funny of a person, so often I get a little stuck when it comes to starting friendships bc I often jump straight to being very earnest and open vs. jokey I guess? Sometimes I get really nervous that I won’t be able to keep someone entertained if it turns out we’ll be spending a lot of one-on-one time together for some reason (like car rides). I tend to want to just sit and talk and focus on listening really well to one or two people at a time. I feel most comfortable when I’m having very earnest conversations with people, so that’s what I tend to fall into when I’m alone with someone. 

I also just really enjoy listening to people talk about what their interests are, and consider it very valuable when someone just wants to tell me about stuff! It really doesn’t matter what it is, I love hearing theories or stories or whatever and often I’m just content to listen and ask questions. Like this scientist I really admire named Jedidah Isler said “I want to know how you think about things and how I can think about those things so we can think about them together,” and that’s basically my goal!!

I also absolutely love it when people send me things that they really like and want to share or think I would want to see, like it’s such a lovely present to see that someone saw a thing and thought I would like to see it too! my #friendpresents tag is explicitly for this.

67.) good luck charms?

my journals!! Even if I don’t need to write in it, having pens and a journal to write/draw in is pretty constant. They’re sort of self-made charms, I’ve been writing/drawing in journals for more than a decade now, so I’m really used to having them. I also am in the habit of anti-wishing for something when luck is involved, so I’ll pretend I don’t want something to somehow increase my chances of getting it.

77.) best plant to grow on a windowsill?

oh man!! My purple shamrock is doing impressively well and has started growing more little flowers, and my bearded cactus has increased like 50% in height since I first got it, so probably those two! I am going to try and grow red sunflowers this summer though, so we’ll see what that’s like!

Thank you so much for this ask, this one got me to really think!! <3

[sciencefordragons]

20, 28, 40

20.) preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

It depends! If I’m just writing personal things to myself, I’ve been writing with gentleness and fervor in bound journals for years, but now that I’m writing stuff like stories I write almost everything for that in Google Docs bc it’s easier to share with most of the people who would want to read my stuff that way. It’s easier when I’m working on an idea to get the idea out fast with typing, but I love having my journals to look back on and remind myself how much I’m growing.

28.) five songs to describe you?

Oh golly this will be hard.

young blood - lynx | everything’s magic - angels & airwaves | adventure spirit - yvette young | a thousand small spaces - the physics house band | man to man - dorian electra

40.) weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

I’m gonna assume this applies to high school, so the weirdest thing I can think of is we had a couple of break-ins my junior year, but whoever was breaking in was only stealing candy from the library, so we all found this incredibly bizarre. Come just before thanksgiving and the final break-in happened, and the guy who’d been breaking in succeeded in setting the library on fire. From what I can remember, the guy who set the fire was the same guy who called 911 and he was just…standing there, watching the fire, so they caught him right off. That wing of the school was closed off completely for the rest of the year.

Thank you for the ask, angel!! <3