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happy leon czolgosz did nothing wrong day!

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The petulant frown of a plains spadefoot toad [Spea bombifrons] sitting on a road with no where to dig in Crowley County, Colorado. Image by Andrew DuBois

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i can tell i'm sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

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i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

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“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.

For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the ‘Cemetery Angel’.”— by Ra-Ey Saley

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Dr James Barry, the first doctor to perform a successful C section wherein both mother and child survived, was a huge champion of handwashing at a time when most doctors didn’t wash their hands. For this reason, many of the chilldbirths he delivered resulted in healthier babies and mothers. He was also a gay trans man, who specifically wrote that upon his death he wished for his body to be taken in its nightshirt, wrapped in his sheets as a shroud, and placed into the coffin so that nobody would see his body. His wishes were not respected, and as a result he was outed at his death.

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Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

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why do they always show cranberries in thos big pits n its implied its wet and possibly swimmable. do cranberries really grow like that. wh

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sometimes I get so angry thinking about ‘The Imitation Game’ that I have to go in a little ‘upset big tantrum room’ in my head for a calm down

like, Benisnatch Cumberque played the same character he’s always plays as an asshole genius and we were all supposed to be okay with it, but it’s basically character slander

at different parts of the movie Turing is described as ‘arrogant, “inhuman,” “narcissistic,” and even “a monster,” in the film he goes against those around him and is shown to periodically ignore and belittle his colleagues

And. I. Am. So. Angry.

Alan Turing was described by his friends and people that knew him as “intensely shy and kindly”, he was said to “inspire loyalty and affection among those who appreciated his unusual gifts” and was “unfailingly generous with his time and expertise, especially toward younger recruits”

He was kind, he was kind, HE WAS KIND, he was kind

he was kind and geeky and awkward and gay, I don’t care if the whole of society doesn’t find that compelling, I don’t care if we don’t value kindness as an attribute in men, he deserved to be loved and respected as he was, not as we wish he was

I am so sorry Alan Turing, I am so sorry your story was not told with care and thoughtfulness, I am so sorry you didn’t get to be shown to be deeply in love with the men you loved, I am sorry your great and terrible tragedy was never unfolded as a kind and brilliant man abused by a horrible homophobic system

You are a hero that turned the tides of history like no other and I am so sorry

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i hope they find a stupid tiny fish or something on mars and make mining illegal, just like the devil’s hole in california

these endangered bastards and their bathtub-sized habitat (just the surface shelf of a giant cave structure thanks) singlehandedly pissed off SO many businessmen lol

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Puerto Rican semi-slug, Gaeotis flavolineata, Amphibulimidae

Semi-slugs are land gastropods whose shells are too small to retract into, but are not quite vestigial (as with true slugs). The opaque green area seen in the middle of the body in the photos above is the shell.

Photos 1-4 by logancrees, 5-6 by gloriveenieves, 7 by stevemaldonadosilvestrini, and 8-10 by juliakmil

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every so often I remember that whales molt

I’m not sure why I feel this way, but imo this is the most cursed marine mammal fact I have ever heard

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Jellyfish stimboard for anon

x x x - x x x - x x x

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My new, totally uneducated guess for why humans tell stories is to keep them from getting bored and cranky while following a gazelle for four hours. No deeper mystery or meaning. Some folk needed a distraction while they tried to catch dinner so they just made some shit up. The end.

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Strange and massive objects plow near the moon, captured on amateur film from Quebec, Canada. (26.03.2020).

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Galaxies: Cities of Stars

Galaxies are like cities made of oodles of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. These beautiful cosmic structures come in many shapes and sizes. Though there are a slew of galaxies in the universe, there are only a few we can see with the unaided eye or backyard telescope.

How many types are out there, how’d so many of them wind up with weird names, and how many stars live inside them? Hold tight while we explore these cosmic metropolises.

Galaxies come in lots of different shapes, sizes, and colors. But astronomers have noticed that there are mainly three types: spiral, elliptical, and irregular.

Spiral galaxies, like our very own Milky Way, look similar to pinwheels! These galaxies tend to have a bulging center heavily populated by stars, with elongated, sparser arms of dust and stars that wrap around it. Usually, there’s a huge black hole hiding at the center, like the Milky Way’s Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star). Our galactic neighbor, Andromeda (also known as Messier 31 or M31), is also a spiral galaxy!

Elliptical galaxies tend to be smooth spheres of gas, dust, and stars. Like spiral galaxies, their centers are typically bulges surrounded by a halo of stars (but minus the epic spiral arms). The stars in these galaxies tend to be spread out neatly throughout the galaxies and are some of the oldest stars in the universe! Messier 87 (M87) is one example of an elliptical galaxy. The supermassive black hole at its center was recently imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Irregular galaxies are, well … a bit strange. They have one-of-a-kind shapes, and many just look like messy blobs. Astronomers think that irregular galaxies’ uniqueness is a result of interactions with other galaxies, like collisions! Galaxies are so big, with so much distance between their stars, that even when they collide, their stars usually do not. Galaxy collisions have been important to the formation of our Milky Way and others. When two galaxies collide, clouds of gas, dust, and stars are violently thrown around, forming an entirely new, larger one! This could be the cause of some irregular galaxies seen today.

Now that we know the different types of galaxies, what about how many stars they contain? Galaxies can come in lots of different sizes, even among each type. Dwarf galaxies, the smallest version of spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies, are usually made up of 1,000 to billions of stars. Compared to our Milky Way’s 200 to 400 billion stars, the dwarf galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud is tiny, with just a few hundred million stars! IC 1101, on the other hand, is one of the largest elliptical galaxies found so far, containing almost 100 trillion stars.

Ever wondered how galaxies get their names? Astronomers have a number of ways to name galaxies, like the constellations we see them in or what we think they resemble. Some even have multiple names!

A more formal way astronomers name galaxies is with two-part designations based on astronomical catalogs, published collections of astronomical objects observed by specific astronomers, observatories, or spacecraft. These give us cryptic names like M51 or Swift J0241.3-0816. Catalog names usually have two parts:

A letter, word, or short acronym that identifies a specific astronomical catalog.

A sequence of numbers and/or letters that uniquely identify the galaxy within that catalog.

For M51, the “M” comes from the Messier catalog, which Charles Messier started compiling in 1771, and the “51” is because it’s the 51st entry in that catalog. Swift J0241.3-0816 is a galaxy observed by the Swift satellite, and the numbers refer to its location in the sky, similar to latitude and longitude on Earth.

There’s your quick intro to galaxies, but there’s much more to learn about them. Keep up with NASA Universe on Facebook and Twitter where we post regularly about galaxies.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.