heliotropopause

[heliotropopause]

[heliotropopause]

arXiv of our own

[heliotropopause]

“Still nothing for me?” the angel asks. John looks especially tired today, but she can summon nothing more than irritation for his frailty. “What can I say, He will not be pleased.”

“I need more time.”

“You all say that. It is like one unending echo down here.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start with yourself,” she says. “That works for most of you.”

The silence accumulates around them. Her patience is wearing thin. Sometimes she wishes he would simply die, and thereby secure her release.

“Have you always been a muse?” John says.

The angel sits up straighter. “I was a soldier,” she says. “I fought in the Great War. Then I guarded the gates of Heaven. But eventually it was decided I should have some other occupation.”

“It’s only…You don’t seem to like people. We must be very tiresome for you. Or perhaps it is just me.”

“I pity people,” she says. “Your lives are so filled with misery. Even for one such as you it is inescapable. Sometimes this world appears to be designed for suffering. Sometimes—” She stops, draws a sharp breath. Her words shift within her like nervous birds. They long to go winging, and one loud noise will send the whole flock exploding outward, past the paltry gate of her tongue, into the world from whence they cannot be reclaimed. Her silence is all that stands between her and disobedience, and whatever punishment that entails. John is looking at her now with a keenness she has not seen in him before. Instead of a broken old man, he looks like a dog who has scented prey.

“I asked for you especially,” she says. “I heard a rumor about you. That you wrote a pamphlet saying rulers must be measured by their deeds, and prosecuted if they are found lacking.”

“I did. I said that it was right to kill the king.”

“Do you believe that still? That those who rule must give way if they are not just?”

Even she can hear the febrile edge that has crept into her voice, but John does not seem alarmed. For the first time, he looks at her as though he understands her. “I do still believe it,” he says. “How glorious to be an angel, and know you serve the only truly just ruler to be found in all of creation.”

The angel presses her lips together until they blanch, nods tersely, and looks away. “Hosanna,” she says.

-”Killer of Kings”, All the Names They Used For God, Anjali Sachdeva

[heliotropopause]

[heliotropopause]

Cast From Iron Hey. If you enjoy when a fun cast of characters argue about fantasy politics surrounding identity and immortality (among other things) while they also struggle to solve a spooky mystery (unsuccesfully) I highly reccomend The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by Lurina. Give it a read! It made me feel insane!

[heliotropopause]

[heliotropopause]

_false_face

[heliotropopause]

For three dimensional spheres of the same size, the smallest possible convex hull involves placing the spheres in a line—until you get to 56 spheres, at which point there is a smaller convex hull you can get by packing them closer together. Apparently for 4-spheres, this pattern holds at least up to 300,000 spheres, and for 42-spheres, it holds indefinitely.

Geometry is so maddening sometimes…

[heliotropopause]

*tattoos a formal representation of that one iterated prisoner’s dilemma strategy where you only retaliate if the other one defects twice on my boobs*

IT’S A TIT FOR TWO TATS TAT FOR TWO TITS

[heliotropopause]

I'm going to the Hardware Store

[heliotropopause]

roborosewater-masters on the dash. Was genuinely losing my shit at r/MTGNeuralNet on the train home earlier. Which was kinda awkward considering I was sitting with 3 strangers.

Peak card design

[heliotropopause]

[heliotropopause]

Today the sky looked like straight from a van gogh painting

[heliotropopause]

[heliotropopause]

could whoever's in charge of public architecture please stop making benches out of thermally conducive materials?

i mean, seriously, who thought making train station/bus stop/streetside benches out of stainless steel with no insulating layer in a place where it gets cold in the winter was a good idea?

[heliotropopause]

Trying to do a tarot reading but the guy across the table is running mono blue and keeps countering my major arcana.