caffeinatedastropath

[caffeinatedastropath]

The Onion Headlines as Ghibli films

Spirited Away

Princess Mononoke

bonus:

Castle in the Sky

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Howl’s Moving Castle

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Ponyo

The Cat Returns

My Neighbor Totoro 

Porco Rosso

[caffeinatedastropath]

Sorry son, missed your soccer tournament playing L4D2

[caffeinatedastropath]

@bloody-beholder

[caffeinatedastropath]

sometimes i have to listen to Song not Music. same song. only one song all day nothing else even sounds like music but That Song

[caffeinatedastropath]

[caffeinatedastropath]

(Source)

[caffeinatedastropath]

adoringly staring at mama

[caffeinatedastropath]

say what you will about trisha paytas but she had her finger on the pulse with this one

[caffeinatedastropath]

my little brother & i are having a scholarly debate about mornings

[caffeinatedastropath]

[caffeinatedastropath]

at a tribal finance conference listening to a quileute tribal council member talk about how companies have bought every house in forks, wa because it’s a tourist destination so they can’t hire people to work for the tribe

anyway fuck stephenie meyer for profiting so intensely off of racist stereotypes of quilteutes and all native people while never contributing a dime to help them solve the problems she caused!

if you have the ability, you can donate to their move to higher ground fund here: https://mthg.org

[caffeinatedastropath]

[caffeinatedastropath]

a treasure found antiquing today

[caffeinatedastropath]

Sibling asked how ppl in star wars dance to jizz music and I had to give her an example

[caffeinatedastropath]

[caffeinatedastropath]

april o'neil from TMNT

[caffeinatedastropath]

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.