#rotation of molecules

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

TSRNOSS, p 619.

[eyelashes-and-teeth]

Paul Newman in Slap Shot (1977) “All I Can Get” Saturday

[tenth-sentence]

If you were to rotate one or another molecule in a clump it would noticeably disrupt the molecular patterns.

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" - Brian Greene

[whats-in-a-sentence]

The ability of molecules to rotate a plane of polarised light can be observed with the use of a polarimeter in the following way (see figure 17.25).

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[toyybox]

These fit so well!!! I immediately want to find them myself, the way you describe the scents is amazing 💗💗💗

Perfumes are so cool!! (My favourite is vanilla scents they are so good) Can I request some perfume ideas for my characters from the ask game 👀

YESYESYES!!! I just binge read your story (well, the first part so far) and OHMYGOD it was so much fun, everyone go read Spiderwebs!!!!

Jackie - Dipped in Chocolate by Imaginary Authors

I just had to include chocolate cake for him somehow, and something vanilla scented for you, and it's by Imaginary Authors for me, the perfect combination. I have a sample of another IA perfume that's really sweet with vanilla (it's called A whiff of a Waffle Cone, it's really not my style, but it smells delicious) so I trust this one is similarly awesome, the other notes in this are cardamom, waffle and sandalwood, which I don't really have a reasoning for how to match to Jackie, but its all about the vibes

I also considered Devils Food by Demeter Fragrances, because that's a straight up chocolate cake scent, it has chocolate, cocoa, wheat, vanilla and sugar as notes

Heather - Escentric 03 and Molecule 03 by Escentric Molecules

Chemistry stuff for our favourite biochemist!! This brand is super cool, because they make scents in pairs, the Molecule ones that are just 1 isolated note and the Escentric one that is designed to complement it's Molecule counterpart! I think she'd appreciate this!

Molecule 03 smells like vetiver, which is a lovely cool, woody scent, which on its own isn't very special or very specifically her, I just think she'd like it, but what makes this combination really *her* is the spices in the Escentric part! It has lime+pepper+ginger, which is bold and spicy and that's really her style in my opinion, but there are also some softer, lighter, feminine notes under that like jasmine+tea+iris! And it has a woody base, and I think that's perfect for her house in the middle of nowhere on some government property :>

[aheathen-conceivably]

New Orleans, 1924

“Good Morning, mi raccomando.”

Josephine bolted awake as though the words were an alarm clock. There were calls to make, men to cajole, artists to placate. The voice could only mean that she had slept in and no one had been there to wake her up. After all, it had been her and only her apartment for over four years. Four years of it smelling like the gardenia perfume she wore and the open bootleg whiskey bottles cooking in the New Orleans heat from the party the night before.

She still wasn’t used to it smelling like fresh herbs and men’s cologne drifting from the well folded shirts on her dresser…🎶

But he was there because he knew that, because from the very first moment they had seen each other nearly three years before, it was as though the rest of the world had ceased to exist. Like a chain reaction that can’t be stopped once it's begun, they had fallen at nearly light speed through the frenetic haze of after parties and illegal booze into an unexpected domesticity that was uncharacteristic of them both.

Maybe if they had known what it would become all those years later, it would have been enough to send them both running. But in that moment, there was no way either of them ever could have, and with one glance, it was too late.

Through the unceasing roar of improvised piano keys, time seemed to be demarcated only by their meetings. At first neither of them had any expectations of the other; they rotated around eachother like satellites, moving through the same circles and parties with an ease that made it feel as though life would always be that way.

Only the crowds seemed to shrink in on them when the other was there, until even the sounds of dancing heels and clinking beer bottles began to feel intimate. And no matter how many parties went by, they ended each and every one together, until eventually, the stranger next to them at daybreak was no longer a stranger.

But surrounded by humid sunshine, neither of them could have identified the moment that they went from two people driven by lust to something more; or maybe they simply didn’t want to. After all, why slow down to question something that just felt right? Maybe that would have ruined it, or maybe, once again, they would have realized that time was carrying them onward into something that neither of them was ready for.

Because as it turned out, falling in love was easier than either of them had ever expected it to be.

Maybe it was because for so long, it felt like he needed nothing more than her, and he seemed to fall into her life like something she had never even known she wanted.

Initially, there were no games and no lies, no difficulties in just how quickly he accepted how totally he had fallen into her orbit. For a while, it made her willing to do the same. Through it all, he never faltered or responded to her impulses with nervousness or trepidation like others did. She had never met anyone else who could roll from one party to the next like he could, or who was just as excited by life as she was. It was infectious - he was infectious, and whether or not she would ever realize it, the simplicity of his joy afforded her more vision than she had ever even had herself.

And all along he knew what she herself still questioned in the dead of night - she was fearless. When she was near he felt like he could live forever, or like she had included him in some conspiratorial plan that the rest of the world knew nothing about. But more than anything, she made him feel alive.

Like being sucked into a vortex, every one of his molecules seemed to contort around her when they were together. Even the way she spoke mystified him. The lights in her eyes were just as vibrant as the words coming out of her mouth. Because deep down, she believed in something better, some star that would always be just out of view, and it made him feel as though maybe he could to catch it too.

As the years passed, she began to realize why he felt different than anyone else she had ever been with - he made her feel safe. She didn’t have to search him to see how he felt; and despite everything she had been taught, he didn’t just want to use her for his own pleasure. He was gentle and kind, and every time she was around him her heart soared. Until eventually, almost tearfully, she realized that she was in love with him, and her apartment would never smell the same again. 

So after a momentary realization that his voice was no alarm clock and the lingering smells were no phantom, she didn’t fight them. Instead she smiled back at the warm look of love she had come to expect. “It’s Sunday, mi raccomando. You don’t have to worry about work today.”

She could have told him that musicians and politicians took no days off, not even in reverence for the Lord. But she didn’t want to, so she stretched out in bed and let him carry the breakfast tray to her. “No one told me this is what living in sin would be like. Breakfast every Sunday. You in whatever bits of clothing you can find.”

His eyebrows shot upward, a false look of indigence feigned on his face for the sake of her smile. “Every Sunday? That’s a big assumption that I’ll be here each and every time.”

She pushed the tray away with her foot and moved between his legs. “Won’t you then? Stay with me. Live here. I know you practically already do but will you in truth? I don’t want you to ever leave. Not when we can be like this.”

His answer came in hurried kisses and forgotten breakfasts one Sunday after another for months. Month after month surrounded by gardenia perfume and young love, the air free of the regrets and resentments that they didn’t know were waiting for them just around the bend.

But time is unstoppable. It moves like an ever-flowing river, shaping and changing the trivial lives that stand in its path. Months became years, and little by little, his unwavering presence became merely a given rather than a revelation.

All the while the world kept spinning, determined to dim the stars in her eyes that he had once brightened. As it did, she began to realize that she could climb back up on the pedestal it kept knocking her down from by simply putting him beneath her. One morning after another, until finally, the last star went out, and the fearlessness he had once admired molted into a hardened shell that he couldn’t break through no matter how many breakfasts he cooked or questions he asked. Then the coffee began to go cold not from their shared tenderness, but from the new realization that the embers of their attraction could be stoked from rage just as easily as they had once been from softness.

Because all along, what neither of them realized, was that falling in love would always be the easiest part.

Little by little, he was the one who began to feel time draining like sand in an hourglass. Because as the world fell apart around them, he realized that no matter how long his shirts had been in her room, the suffocating smell of gardenia perfume never abated. There was no place for him there - trapped in the orbit of a woman who would never let him in, doomed in a city where every respectable citizen shirked from his name.

So he took a gamble. A series of gambles, really. The first had seemed certain. The promise of The West - a place where a man could go to make himself, to reinvent his past and build a corner of the world that was his and his alone. How could he have known that the cruel dominos of history were lining up behind him?

But he had always known that the second bet was riskier. He had wagered his own heart against the house, risking it all on the hope that if he left he would be able to chase the stars in his eyes rather than forever following the ones in hers. He had gambled on the thin chance that he could run from the smell of gardenia perfume; and that maybe, just maybe, if he played his cards exactly right, then he would see her again. Except when he did, he would be the one sitting at the head of the table, his heart safe from the roulette wheel and content with the surety that she would never walk out on him again.

New Mexico, 1936

When Gio awoke, the air was drier than he expected it to be. Before he could even fully open his eyes, one name was already on the tip on his tongue. “Jo? Mi raccomando?”

But there was no answer. The door was open wide and her suitcases were gone. He knew that meant she was still on the road, or that maybe it was time for him to finally admit that she was never coming home. That's why it was better in the warm, humid air of New Orleans in 1924. So he closed his eyes and rolled over to the other side of the bed.

Because even though falling in love was the easiest part, it was also the hardest to forget.

Previous / Next

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars”

In A City On Mars, biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren't going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead:

https://www.acityonmars.com/

The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that ever aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What's more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool).

Every place we might settle in space – giant rotating rings, the Moon, Mars – is vastly more hostile than Earth. Not just more hostile than Earth as it stands today – the most degraded, climate-wracked, nuke-blasted Earth you can imagine is a paradise of habitability compared to anything else. Mars is covered in poison and the sky disappears under planet-sized storms that go on and on. The Moon is covered in black-lung-causing, razor-sharp, electrostatically charged dust. Everything is radioactive. There's virtually no water. There are temperature swings of hundreds of degrees every couple of hours or weeks. You're completely out of range of resupply, emergency help, or, you know, air.

There's Helium 3 on the Moon, but not much of it, and there is no universe in which is it cheaper to mine for Helium 3 on the Moon than it is to mine for it on Earth. That's generally true of anything we might bring back from space, up to and including continent-sized chunks of asteroid platinum.

Going to space doesn't end war. The countries that have gone to space are among the most militarily belligerent in human history. The people who've been to space have come back perfectly prepared to wage war.

Going to space won't save us from the climate emergency. The unimaginably vast trove of material and the energy and advanced technology needed to lift it off Earth and get it to Mars is orders of magnitude more material and energy than we would need to resolve the actual climate emergency here.

We aren't anywhere near being a "multiplanetary species." The number of humans you need in a colony to establish a new population is hard to estimate, but it's very large. Larger than we can foreseeably establish on the Moon, on Mars, or on a space-station. But even if we could establish such a colony, there's little evidence that it could sustain itself – not only are we a very, very long way off from such a population being able to satisfy its material needs off-planet, but we have little reason to believe that children could gestate, be born, and grow to adulthood off-planet.

To top it all off, there's space law – the inciting subject matter for this excellent book. There's a lot of space law, and while there are some areas of ambiguity, the claims of would-be space entrepreneurs about how their plans are permissible under the settled parts of space law don't hold up. But those claims are robust compared to claims that space law will simply sublimate into its constituent molecules when exposed to the reality of space travel, space settlement, and (most importantly) space extraction.

Space law doesn't exist in a vacuum (rimshot). It is parallel to – and shares history with – laws regarding Antarctica, the ocean's surface, and the ocean's floor. These laws relate to territories that are both vastly easier to access and far more densely populated by valuable natural resources. The fact that they remain operative in the face of economic imperatives demands that space settlement advocates offer a more convincing account than "money talks, bullshit walks, space law is toast the minute we land on a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid."

The Weinersmiths have such an account in defense of space law: namely, that space law, and its terrestrial analogs, constitute a durable means of resolving conflicts that would otherwise give rise to outcomes that are far worse for science, entrepreneurship, human thriving or nation-building than the impediments these laws represent.

What's more, space law is enforceable. Not only would any space settlement be terribly, urgently dependent on support from Earth for the long-foreseeable future, but every asteroid miner, Lunar He3 exporter and Martian potato-farmer hoping to monetize their products would have an enforcement nexus with a terrestrial nation and thus the courts of that nation.

But the Weinersmiths aren't anti-space. They aren't even anti-space-settlement. Rather, they argue that the path to space-based scientific breakthroughs, exploration of our solar system, and a deeper understanding of our moral standing in a vast universe cannot start with space settlements.

Landing people on the Moon or Mars any time soon is a stunt – a very, very expensive stunt. These boondoggles aren't just terribly risky (though they are – people who attempt space settlement are very likely to die horribly and after not very long), they come with price-tags that would pay for meaningful space science. For the price of a crewed return trip to Mars, you could put multiple robots onto every significant object in our solar system, and pilot an appreciable fleet of these robot explorers back to Earth with samples.

For the cost of a tiny, fraught, lethal Moon-base, we could create hundreds of experiments in creating efficient, long-term, closed biospheres for human life.

That's the crux of the Weinersmiths' argument: if you want to establish space settlements, you need to do a bunch of other stuff first, like figure out life-support, learn more about our celestial neighbors, and vastly improve our robotics. If you want to create stable space-settlements, you'll need to create robust governance systems – space law that you can count on, rather than space law that you plan on shoving out the airlock. If you want humans to reproduce in space – a necessary precondition for a space settlement that lasts more than a single human lifespan – then we need to do things like breed multiple generations of rodents and other animals, on space stations.

Space is amazing. Space science is amazing. Crewed scientific space missions are amazing. But space isn't amazing because it offers a "Plan B" for an Earth that is imperiled by humanity's recklessness. Space isn't amazing because it offers unparalleled material wealth, or unlimited energy, or a chance to live without laws or governance. It's not amazing because it will end war by mixing the sensawunda of the "Pale Blue Dot" with the lebensraum of an infinite universe.

A science-driven approach to space offers many dividends for our species and planet. If we can figure out how to extract resources as dispersed as Lunar He3 or asteroid ice, we'll have solved problems like extracting tons of gold from the ocean or conflict minerals from landfill sites, these being several orders of magnitude more resource-dense than space. If we can figure out how to create self-sustaining terraria for large human populations in the radiation-, heat- and cold-blasted environs of space, we will have learned vital things about our own planet's ecosystems. If we can build the robots that are necessary for supporting a space society, we will have learned how to build robots that take up the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks that human workers perform on Earth today.

In other words, it's not just that we should solve Earth's problems before attempting space settlement – it's that we can't settle space until we figure out the solutions to Earth's problems. Earth's problems are far simpler than the problems of space settlement.

As I read the Weinersmiths' critique of space settlement, I kept thinking of the pointless AI debates I keep getting dragged into. Arguments for space settlement that turn on existential risks (like humanity being wiped out by comets, sunspots, nuclear armageddon or climate collapse) sound an awful lot like the arguments about "AI safety" – the "risk" that the plausible sentence generator is on the verge of becoming conscious and turning us all into paperclips.

Both arguments are part of a sales-pitch for investment in commercial ventures that have no plausible commercial case, but whose backers are hoping to get rich anyway, and are (often) sincerely besotted with their own fantasies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Both AI and space settlement pass over the real risks, such as the climate consequences of their deployment, or the labor conditions associated with their production. After all, when you're heading off existential risk, you don't stop to worry about some carbon emissions or wage theft.

And critically, both ignore the useful (but resolutely noncommercial) ways that AI or space science can benefit our species. AI radiology analysis might be useful as an adjunct to human radiological analysis, but that is more expensive, not less. Space science might help us learn to use our materials more efficiently on Earth, and that will come long before anyone makes rendezvous with a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid.

There are beneficial uses for LLMs. When the Human Rights Data Analysis Group uses an LLM to help the Innocence Project New Orleans extract and categorize officer information from wrongful conviction records, they are doing something valuable and important:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

It's socially important work, a form of automation that is an unalloyed good, but you won't hear about it from LLM advocates. No one is gonna get rich on improving the efficiency of overturning wrongful convictions with natural language processing. You can't inflate a stock bubble with the Innocence Project.

By the same token, learning about improving gestational health by breeding multigenerational mouse families in geosynchronous orbit is no way to get a billionaire tech baron to commit $250 billion to space science. But that's not an argument against emphasizing real science that really benefits our whole species. It's an argument for taking away capital allocation authority from tech billionaires.

I'm a science fiction writer. I love stories about space. But I can distinguish fantasy from reality and thought experiments from suggestions. Kim Stanley Robinson's 2015 novel Aurora – about failed space settlement – is every bit as fascinating and inspirational as "golden age" sf:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/

But still, it inspired howls of outrage from would-be space colonists. So much so that Stan wrote a brilliant essay explaining what we were all missing about space settlement, which I published:

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

With City on Mars, the Weinersmiths aren't making the case for giving up on space, nor are they trying to strip space of its romance and excitement. They're trying to get us to focus on the beneficial, exciting, serious space science we can do right now, not just because it's attainable and useful – but because it is a necessary precondition for any actual space settlement in the distant future.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

[lostintransist]

The Real Problem With The Trolley

Coffee Shop Meet Cute | Part 9 | Final Part

Part 1 here. AO3

You didn’t tell anyone about the kiss Kyle had laid on your cheek, or how, when you lay down that night, you touched yourself imagining his fingers instead of yours.

It almost hurt how casual, normal, he was. No change in your text conversations or the random ‘I’m making dinner, keep my company’ video calls that were standard for his leave times. Made you wonder if you were betraying the friendship each night you imagined his lips on yours as you whined into your pillow.

No one could blame you for dragging your bestie along with you. You had deep, deep feelings for Kyle, but had only met his sister one time. Trisha lifted a glass in toast when you found her inside the club. She and her friends had secured a table. You hadn’t been clubbing since the last time a ‘friend’ went home with a man who took a pass at you and didn’t react well to being told to fuck off.

Damn. You really did have so many experiences being passed over, huh?

Seeing Kyle step up to the table puts a stutter in your step. Fucking hell. That man could wear your ugliest leggings and the hoodie you had had for over a decade, the one that the cuffs were being pulled apart by connecting holes, and still draw eyes like he walked the fashion runway. His cool demeanor, brows drawn and tension held across his lips, disappeared as he caught sight of his sister. He greeted her with a side hug and a kiss to the temple. A warmth that would revive you from a dip in the Arctic filled his gaze when he found yours.

Therapy has been added to your rotation of appointments and self-care steps. Paying a $50 deductible to get your ass verbally handed to you by the nicest black woman you had ever met would never not be a trip. Monique, a seasoned therapist who specialized in helping women, would lift the corners of her lips, the barest hint, and you knew you were in for an earth-shattering revelation. The appointment you had a few hours before this? Bangers. You left feeling like she had taken to banging you with a baseball bat, emotionally. Though physically wouldn’t be that far off.

“If Kyle breaks your heart, it’s no different than anyone else who failed to show up for you. Are you going to let a familiar pain keep you from happiness?” And a spine severing, “You don’t let others fight for you because you don’t believe you’re worth the bloodshed.”

The possibility of letting Kyle in, asking, inviting him into your vulnerable parts sat on your tongue like a new flavor. You couldn’t decide if you would swallow it down and absorb the changes or let it fall, slimy and wet from your mouth. You took to rolling the idea around like a marble, the glass clinking against the enamel of your teeth.

A small nod in his direction, and you slam a shot from the table and turn to get lost among the sea of bodies. The base and the heat that seemed to rise from the floor combined with the alcohol, siphoning water from your cells to help you find a near-meditative state. Meditation might not be the right word, this mentality is as fluid and shifty as liquid mercury.

The night thumps along. Forging connections as strong as water bonds, you make and lose friends to the shifting waves. All the while, Kyle watches. He plucks you from the edge when you drift too close and presses a bottle of overpriced water into your hand. He does this to everyone here for the divorce party. You had managed to sneak a drink past him without paying the water toll and proudly danced where he could see.

Bestie, Kyle’s latest catch and release, grooved her hips next to you as she rejoined the population of molecules filling the space.

“Whoa, he is gorgeous! Is he your boyfriend?” A random woman with neon makeup asked your bestie.

“Kyle? No! He’s in love with my best friend,” she shouts over the sound of the music.

You coughed out the drink you had sipped into your mouth. Holding the glass high, you hunch over, trying to clear the fluid from your lungs.

“He’s not in love with me,” you cough out between trying to clear your throat and lungs of the burning liquid.

Neon eye shadow woman and your bestie shared a look. The hand on your arm, dragging you from the club, didn’t surprise you. Bestie grabbed your drink as you stumbled after him. The slap of air on your overheated body felt like taking a polar plunge. Refreshing in a bracing kind of way. He pulled you down the block a bit and stepped into an alley.

“Why do you think I’m not in love with you?” The sharp slant of Kyle’s eyebrows would cut you if they reached out to touch them.

Yanking your arm from his hand, you fold them tight to your chest.

“You can’t be serious.”

The reaction comes from your gut. Deep and visceral.

“What do you mean I ‘can’t be serious’?” Kyle somehow looks frustrated, sad, confused, and alarmed all at once.

“Look at me, Kyle,” you wave a hand to your person, “I am not nearly as pretty as someone you would pursue. You’re gorgeous, wicked smart, and funny. I know that ‘shooting for the stars’ is the goal and all that, but I am firmly aware that I don’t have the necessary power to propel myself into your atmosphere.”

You’ve never seen a man look more devastated and pissed off in the same quirk of his eyebrows.

Before you could open your mouth and replace the hurt on his face, his hands are cupping your cheeks, and your back is firing off COLD, COLD, COLD from where the wall steals your heat. A deadly soldier stares down at you, eyes examining you like the blueprints to the base he would be infiltrating.

“What do I have to do to make you believe me?” The growl on the word sent shivers down your spine that the wall couldn’t prompt.

“I…I don’t know,” the whisper is pulled from the pit where you throw all your bad feelings: the abandonment issues you avoided seeing and the self-hatred that you had yet to starve out.

Kyle lowered his lips to yours like he was waiting for your objection. He found none. The kiss went on and on and on. Your fingers found their way to one shoulder and his abs as they clutched for a buoy to keep your head afloat. He kissed you like he needed to convince God that she couldn’t take you back. Like he loved you.

He explored your mouth, his palm cupping the back of your head, until his phone rang. Cursing into your mouth, he ignored it for three rings.

Nose buried in your cheek, he answered the call.

“Garrick.”

The professional tone held none of the breathlessness you fought. Kyle pressed a kiss to you as he listened, working his way to your ear before gently pulling your lobe between his teeth.

Cognizant of his phone call, you keep the sounds of your pleasure trapped in your chest.

“I’ll be there at 0400,” he ended the call and stood tall with a sigh. “Now, what to do about you?”

Uncurling your hands, his shirt takes all your focus, eyes wide and staring.

“I have a job. Don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I am going to set up automated text messages for a length of time. They will be filled with things I want you to read, watch, listen to.” Kyle tipped your chin up and pressed a lingering kiss to your lips, “When I get home? I want to take you on a proper date.”

Nerves choked you, seawater breaching your nose despite your lips being locked against the flood. Kyle delivered you back to the dance floor and hugged his sister goodbye before he slipped out of the club and damn near out of existence.

Three weeks and two days after the last message had buoyed you, the phone rang on your bed as you showered.

You didn’t check it until after you were ensconced in bed.

1 Missed Call - Kyle Garrick

The breath stuttered in your chest. He’s home? Well maybe not home yet but he must be close enough to be able to call without chancing death. When the screen blacks out your thumb crunches the button into waking the phone again. He called less than fifteen minutes ago.

Calling him back is less a choice and more a reaction from your muscles that happen before you that live in your body can make a choice. You hit voicemail before it even rings. His voicemail greeting is not what you expected.

“I’m headed home. Flight is scheduled to land ‘round three am or so. If I don’t see you I will assume you don’t want to pick up the discussion we were having when I left.” A distant voice that sounded somewhat like Johnny’s, followed by Kyle’s. “I’ll be at the north baggage claim until four.”

A breath of silence enters your ear and then the beep of the voicemail recording. Pulling the phone away from your ear you end the call. Tipping the corner to your lips your eyes stare at a pile of laundry as your mind trips into the final boss of choices. You’d been in love with Kyle for a long time. So, so long. This would be the do-or-die moment. Such a simple out, ‘I was asleep when you called’, ‘I didn’t see this until I woke’. But were you worth the possible prick of pain?

You had heard a version of Sleeping Beauty once, so unlike the normal telling, it surfaced now in your mind. The suitor battled through tricky and beguiling barriers, the hedge of thorns that was common to every version of the tale. But this time? There was a creature, large and fearsome. No matter how the suitor circled the castle the beast remained. Not until he took a step forward did the beast change. The new perspective led the suitor to discover that the creature that blocked his way was not massive but as small as a kitten to be tucked into a satchel.

Could this be your beast to best? This fear that he might not want you? That he might change his mind? Kyle, who declared he is not a good man, still set this choice at your feet. He didn’t have to do that. Kyle could kiss you until you agreed to anything he said. Begged to be his even. But he didn’t. The man, respected and loved by so many, put the decision to step forward or back in your hands — no matter his potential pain he wanted you enough to let you choose.

It was that thought, more than any other, that he was willing to brave the pain that spurred you out of your bed. Quickly ridding yourself of all your bedtime clothes and hair maintenance you rushed out the door. Your phone lay on your bed.

His flight got in earlier than he expected it to. Still took nearly an hour to get through customs to sit and stare at the baggage claim. The spinning carousels were paused this deep in the night. They started slowly after a crowd of people surrounded it as if to cast stones if the machine did not deliver their belongings soon.

Airport staff did not want people to linger and the architects provided for that eventuality. He sat on the art structure that doubled as the only seating.

Kyle didn’t watch his phone, familiar with counting minutes on watch. He watched now. Waited for you. At four AM on the dot, Kyle pulled his phone out of his pocket. No missed calls. Nothing. Once on a job he had taken a knife between the ribs, gave him a collapsed lung. That pain, the trying to breathe and getting less than half a breath, attacked him now.

He thought you might love him. Damn him twice the fool then. Truly, he had hoped the love notes that he plucked from poets had been heavier than your doubts. Kyle settled his head in his hands, sucking in air through his nose. He could cry when he got home, letting out the pain into his pillow before being ready to smile at you again.

Standing Kyle wiped his thumbs under his eyes and shouldered his pack. He got two steps from the perch where he left his hope when he heard his name. Shouting is not something you expect to hear in the airport at 4 AM. Turning, he sees you. You, the person who he watched trip up the stairs at least three times since he met you, jumping off the back of a golf cart driven by an airport staff member.

Shocked into stillness is not something Kyle had ever experienced, until now. You are running, slamming into him with full force. Only the skills that keep him alive on the battlefield keep the two of you from going down now. You are mumbling words into his chest that he has no chance of understanding.

“Hey, hey,” he rubs your shoulder, “I can’t hear you.”

When you look up at him tears are breaching your eyes and streaming down your cheeks.

“Why the fuck would you tell me the north baggage claim? You know the second I step in a building I lose all sense of direction!” Your voice breaks on the last word.

That shredding of your tone washes over him with a healing balm. He’s more of an idiot than Johnny sometimes.

“Why didn’t you call?” Tears are straining his voice now; he presses a kiss to your forehead anyway.

“I was in such a rush I left my phone on my bed. This is the third baggage claim I have been to in the last hour. I would have missed you if not for Anthony, he drove me across the airport to reach you.”

Kyle let out a watery laugh as he pulled you into a tight hug, “I’m sorry, love. I should have given you clearer instructions.”

You grip him back fiercely.

“Yes, you should have.”

The muttered words make him smile.

“What made you choose me?”

Pulling back from his grip you give him the most tender look he had ever seen in his entire life.

“You are worth the possibility of pain, Kyle Garrick. I love you.”

His knees went weak, pulling his lips to yours as his heart tried to grow beyond the confines of his ribs.

“I love you, thank you for taking a chance on me,” he whispered against your lips.

Then and there Kyle vowed to prove that he was worth the chance you gave him.

A/N: That's all folks! Another one marked as complete and what a happy ending! See @skeletonsucker I CAN MAKE HAPPY STORIES TOO!

Coffee Masterlist | Masterlist

@soldierservant @demothers-empty-blog @thriving-n-jiving @blackhawkfanatic @skeletonsucker @readingthingy @goatgoesmbe @littlelovebug98

[usafphantom2]

When a jet airplane is flying faster than Mach 1—beyond the speed of sound—the air entering the engines is moving supersonically as well. But no turbojet engine compressor—the rotating disks and blades at the face of the engine that compress the air before it is mixed with fuel—is capable of handling supersonic air flow. The job of an engine inlet is to slow incoming air to subsonic speeds before it passes through the engine.

The inlet’s job is complicated by the fact that air moving supersonically behaves differently from subsonic air. An aircraft flying subsonically pushes through the air ahead of it, with each molecule of air having plenty of time to pass over its wings and fuselage. But as an airplane approaches Mach 1, it compresses the air ahead of it into shock waves—bands of air radiating from the airplane that are much hotter and denser than the ambient air.

Turbojet engines cannot digest the shock waves generated by their inlets, so a crucial role of the inlet is to keep the inevitable shock waves positioned so that they do no harm. The SR-71 Blackbird is a now-retired twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft. During some Blackbird flights, however, the harmonious working of the spike and the forward and aft bypass doors broke down, and all too quickly the inlet was filled with more air than it could handle. When the air pressure inside the inlet became too great, the normal shock wave was suddenly belched out of the inlet in an unstart, accompanied by an instantaneous loss of air flow to the engine, an enormous increase in drag, and a significant yaw to the side with the affected inlet.

Unstarts occurred “when you least expected them—all relaxed and taking in the magnificent view from 75,000 feet,” wrote Rich Graham in SR-71 Revealed.

@Habubrats71 via X

[netscapenavigator-official]

Organic Chemistry be like "this is a compound that is absolutely vital for life to exist. If you do not consume copious amounts of this substance you will die."

*rotates image 90 degrees*

"Meanwhile, this substance is the most deadly thing on the planet. If you consume even a single molecule of this, you will die a horrible death like no human has before."

[ladytabletop]

I'm co-hosting a game jam!

What is Dice Exploder? Each week, Sam Dunnewold and a rotating cohost break down one tabletop RPG mechanic as deep as they possibly can.

For the duration of the third season, we're running a game jam inspired by the podcast's premise. You can join the DE Discord , where there's a channel for this game jam, to discuss your submission with other participants and fans of the show.

Explode a game you love (or want to love) and remix, remake, or reinterpret it in part or whole.

Dice Exploder is about zooming in on a part of a game and making it everything. This jam is about taking your favorite part of a game and dragging it to the center of the experience. Want to turn that 400 page tome you can never get anyone to play into a single-page game? Go for it! Is there a combat sim game you're pretty sure is actually about running a coffee shop? Write those rules. Taking a setting apart down to the molecules and rewriting it as barely an echo of the original? Totally fair play.

The jam runs from Feb 1 to Apr 1.

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

TSRNOSS, p 709.

[petervintonjr]

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN, said Death. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little fair--"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET --Death waved a hand-- AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes," returned Susan, "but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point--"

MY POINT EXACTLY. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

======

Happy Hogswatch my beloveds. I truly have no idea what kind of future lies ahead for us. Whether the sun is going to rise in the sky… or a flaming sphere of hydrogen and helium is going to sequentially illuminate the surface of a rotating planet. And I'm definitely not the believing sort, which I guess kind of limits my vision as an artist or as a teacher. So in the absence of anything else I'll just keep doing the few practical things that I know I can do well (or at least competently), and trust to hope that my efforts might put at least a few tablespoons' worth of good into the world --or at the very least stave off some of the really bad stuff. If that counts as belief, then I guess that's probably worth a few more sunrises.

Look after one another my dears.

[radioactiveradley]

By popular (???) request, based on the outcome of this poll.

A WARNING: you guys really did pick the most complex one. This is loooooong. A DISCLAIMER. This is a silly little lesson aimed at folks who know sod-all about MRI. There are memes. There is (arguably) overuse of the term ‘big chungus’. If you are looking to delve deeper into the mysteries of K-Space, this is not the Tumblr post for you.

So, without further ado...

Today I am introducing you to my one true love. The legend. The icon.

Ferromagnetic material loves him. Claustrophobic people fear him.

Yeah, that’s right – we’re talking about the big boom-boom sexyboy magnet machine, hereby known as Big Chungus.

Aka...

MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING

First off, though? Let’s start small.

Very, very small.

Meet HYDROGEN.

The nucleus of this element is made up of a single proton, which has a magnetic dipole – i.e., it acts like a tiny bar magnet.

Hydrogen is also a component of water. As we all know, we’re basically walking sacks of goop – meaning that Hydrogen is abundant throughout our bodies.

Therefore, when we stick you in a strong magnetic field… say, within our friend Big Chungus… we can manipulate all those tiny Hydrogen atoms in a variety of fun ways.

Under normal conditions, all your Hydrogen protons are pointing every-which-way.

But in Big Chungus, there is a strong longitudinal magnetic field that travels along the Z-axis of the machine. So, all your teeny tiny Hydrogen protons swivel to align with that field!

If a proton’s energy is LOWER than that of the longitudinal magnetic field (a majority), they will align PARALLEL with the field. If their energy is HIGHER (a minority) they will align ANTI-PARALLEL.

As most of the protons align with the longitudinal magnetic field, the net magnetisation vector within the human body is also longitudinal! This is called the thermodynamic equilibrium – the resting state for all those li’l protons when your body is within Big Chungus.

(You won’t feel any different, btw! We’re flipping a bunch of teeny-tiny bits inside you, but you won’t feel a thing!) (You might do later, when we activate the Gradient coils. We’ll….. get to that)

But, while all of this is very cool, it gives us no actual information. We gotta play some more with your protons - which brings us to arguably the most important concept in MRI. I mean, it’s literally in the name!

Let’s go back to our Hydrogen protons.

We’ve established that they’re all pointing in different directions. But they’re not just sitting still. They’re spinning and wobbling all over the shop.

We call this rotational wobbly movement precession.

In their natural state, these protons all precess at different speeds. When we subject them to Big Chungus, as well as all lining up neatly with the magnetic field, they all start to precess at the same speed.

However, their magnetic North will be pointing to different points at any given moment. Imagine two clocks, both of which are ticking at the same rate, but which have been set to read different times.

This is where magnetic resonance comes in.

In addition to the homogenous longitudinal magnetic field provided by Big Chungus, we also create an oscillating magnetic field in the transverse plane by using a radiofrequency (RF) pulse. We can tune that oscillation to the ‘resonant frequency’ of Hydrogen atoms.

Every molecule capable of resonance has its own specific frequency. We use a funky equation called the Larmor Equation to work this out, or, as I like to call it, W, BOY!!!

(The weird ‘w’ is the resonance frequency; the weird ‘Bo’ is the magnetic field strength, and the weird ‘Y’ is the gyromagnetic ratio of each particular element.)

So, we know exactly at what frequency to apply that RF pulse to your protons, to achieve resonance!

But what is resonance?

In acoustics, a ‘resonant frequency’ is the frequency an external wave needs to be applied at in order to create the maximum amplitude of vibrations within the object. Like when opera singers shatter glass with their voice! They’re singing at the resonant frequency of the glass, which makes it vibrate to the point where it compromises its structural integrity.

A similar concept applies in magnetic precession, with, uh, less destructive results. We’re not exploding anything inside of you, don’t worry!

(We do explode your innards accidentally in Ultrasound sometimes, via a different mechanism. But you’ll have to ask me more about that later. >:3)

To put it simply, magnetic resonance is the final step in getting those protons to BEHAVE. Now, the clocks have been corrected so their hands move at exactly the same time, in the same position. The protons are precessing ‘in phase’. Yay!

This creates transverse magnetisation, as the magnetic vectors of all those protons (which, remember, act as bar magnets) will swing around to point in one direction at the same time.

But the cool thing about resonance? It also allows the protons to absorb energy from the RF pulse.

(Do NOT ask me how. Do NOT. I will cry.)

And remember how the higher-energy protons flip anti-parallel to the longitudinal magnetic vector of Big Chungus, while the lower-energy protons are aligned parallel? And because we have more low-energy protons than high-energy protons, our body gains a longitudinal magnetic vector to match Big Chungus?

Zapping those protons at their resonant frequency gives 'em energy (a process known as ‘excitation’, which I love, because I get to imagine them putting little party hats on and having a rave).

So, loads of them flip anti-parallel! Enough to cancel out the net longitudinal magnetic vector of our bodies – despite the best efforts of good ol’ Chungus!

(Keep trying, Chungus. We love you.)

Our protons are as far from our happy equilibrium as they can possibly be. We’ve lost longitudinal magnetisation, and gained transverse magnetisation. Oh noooo however can we fix this ohhhh noooooo

Simple. We turn off the RF pulse.

Everything returns to that sweet, sweet thermodynamic equilibrium.

Longitudinal magnetisation is regained. I.e., the protons realign with Big Chungus’s longitudinal magnetic field, with the majority aligned parallel rather than anti-parallel.

This is called SPIN-LATTICE RELAXATION.

‘T1 time’ is the point by which 63% of longitudinal magnetisation has been regained after application of the RF pulse. A T1-weighted image shows the difference between T1 relaxation times of different tissues.

And, without that oscillating RF pulse, we lose resonance – the protons fall out of phase randomly, due to the delightful unpredictable nature of entropy, and Transverse magnetisation reduces.

This is called SPIN-SPIN RELAXATION.

Or, if we’re feeling dramatic…

‘T2 time’ is the point by which 37% of the transverse magnetisation has been lost. A T2-weighted image shows the difference between T2 relaxation times of different tissues.

(Spin-spin is objectively a hilarious phrase to say in full seriousness when surrounded by important physics-y people. However, a word to the wise: do not make a moon-moon joke. They are not on Tumblr (present company excluded). They will not understand. You will get strange looks.)

But remember how resonance lets our protons shlorp up that sweet, sweet energy from the RF pulse? Well, in order to get back to thermodynamic equilibrium and line up with Big Chungus again, they have to splort that energy back out.

This is why we stick a cage over the body part we’re imaging. That cage isn’t a magnet, or a way of keeping you still – it’s a receiver coil.

It picks up the RF signal that’s given off by your innards as they relax from the intense work-out we just put them through. How cool is that??

The amount of time we wait between applying the RF pulse and measuring the ‘echo’ from within your body is called the ‘ECHO TIME’, or ‘TE’ (because we didn’t want to call it ET).

(yes, we’re cowards. Sorry.)

We also have ‘REPETITION TIME’ or ‘TR’ – the amount of time we leave between RF pulses! This determines how much longitudinal magnetisation can recover between each pulse.

By manipulating TE and TR, we can alter the contrast (i.e., the blacks and whites) on our image.

Areas of high received signal (hyperintense) are shown as white, while areas of low received signal (hypointense) are shown as black. Different sorts of tissue will have different ratios of Hydrogen-to-other-shit, and different densities of Hydrogen-and-other-shit – ergo, some tissue blasts out all of its stored energy SUPER QUICK. Others give it off slower.

A T1-weighted image has a short TR and TE time.

Fat realigns its longitudinal magnetisation with Big Chungus SUPER QUICK. This means, on a T1-weighted image, it looks hyperintense. However, water realigns its longitudinal magnetisation with Big Chungus slooooowly. Therefore, on a T1-weighted image, fluid looks hypointense! Ya see?

A T2-weighted image has a long TR and TE time.

The precession of protons in fat decays relatively slow, so it will look quite bright on a T2-scan. But water decays slower, and therefore, by the time we take the T2 image, fluids within the body will be giving off comparatively ‘more’ signal than fat – meaning they’ll appear more hyperintense!

If we have a substance with intrinsically long T1 and T2 values, it will appear dark on a T1-weighted image and bright on a T2-weighted image, and the same in reverse. If a substance has a short T1 value and a long T2 value, it will appear relatively ‘bright’ on both T1 and T2-weighted images – i.e., fat and intervertebral discs.

As every tissue has its own distinct T1 and T2 property… we can work out precisely what sort of tissue we’re looking at.

When we build in all our additional sequences, this becomes even clearer! This is why your MRI scan takes sooooo long – we’re running SO MANY sequences, manipulating TR and TE to determine the exact T1 and T2 properties of various tissues within your bod.

There is, however, a problem.

The RF signal given off by each proton doesn’t shoot out in a handy-dandy straight line. Meaning, we have no idea where the signal is coming from within your body.

Enter our lord and saviour:

THE GRADIENT COILS.

(Shim coils are also very important – they maintain field homogeneity across the whole of Big Chungus. While Big Chungus wouldn’t need them in a perfect theoretical scenario… reality ain’t that. Big Chungus’s magnetic field is all wibbly-wobbly, so we use Shims to keep everything smooth! That’s all you need to know about them. BACK TO THE GRADIENTS.)

There are three of them, wrapping around each of the three planes of your body. When these activate, they cause those epicly eerie booming noises, characteristic of a Big Chungus ExperienceTM.

The Gradient coils are also what causes those weird tingling sensations you get in an MRI machine – which, don’t worry, aren’t permanent! Your nerves just go ‘WOAHG. THASSALOT OF MAGNET SHIT. HM. DON’T LIKE THAT.’ But they’ll calm down again once you’re freed from Big Chungus.

The gradient coils cause constant fluctuations in the magnetic field across all three dimensions. They activate sequentially, isolating one chunk of your body after the next.

As these fluctuations cause variation within the signal received, we can look at how much THAT particular signal, received at THAT particular number of milliseconds after an RF pulse, varied when THAT particular gradient was activated, in comparison to when THAT OTHER gradient was activated.

For every single bit of signal output.

That gives us A WHOLE LOTTA DATA.

^ imagine this, but the cupboard contents is just. data.

Way too much data, in fact, for our puny human brains to comprehend – so obviously, we feed it to an algorithm.

K-space is a funky computational matrix where all this info gets compiled during data acquisition. Once we’ve finished the scan sequence and have all that yummy raw data, it can be mathematically processed to create a final image!

Just like that. Simple, right?

TL;DR

You are full of Hydrogen.

Hydrogen nuclei (protons) are basically tiny magnets

These tiny magnets are orientated completely randomly, with ‘North’ pointing in all directions

We stick billions of these tiny magnets (i.e., you) into a mahoosive magnet (i.e., Big Chungus)

All the tiny magnets flip around to align with the longitudinal magnetic field of Big Chungus

High energy protons = antiparallel Low energy protons = parallel

As you have more low energy protons than high energy protons in your body, the net magnetic vector of your body is longitudinal – just like Big Chungus!

All your protons are spinning and wobbling (precessing) at random rates

We use an RF pulse, tuned to the Resonance Frequency of Hydrogen, to make ‘em precess in phase (wobble at the same time, all pointing in the same direction at once). This creates a Transverse magnetic vector.

This in-phase precession is ‘Magnetic Resonance’

Magnetic Resonance means the protons can absorb energy from the RF pulse

Now there are more high energy protons within your body! They flip antiparallel, and the net longitudinal magnetic vector of your body decreases.

We measure the time it takes for the high-energy protons to release that energy and return to alignment with the net magnetic vector of Big Chungus (Spin-Lattice Relaxation / T1 recovery)

And the time it takes for the precessing-in-phase protons to Quit That Nonsense and all start wobbling in random directions again (Spin-Spin Decay / T2 recovery)

Each tissue within your body has a different composition & density of Hydrogen atoms – which means each tissue within your body has a unique T1 & T2 recovery time

By measuring the signal at different times (TE) and by varying the frequency with which we apply RF pulses (TR), we ‘take pictures’ that show variations in the amount of signal these tissues are giving off. The signal is caught by the large radiofrequency receiver coils we put over you when you enter the machine.

Because the signal given off during recovery/decay blasts out in all directions, we don’t know exactly where it originated within your body.

Gradient coils are arranged across X, Y, and Z axes throughout the gantry of Big Chungus. They cause tiny fluctuations in the magnetic field, in sequential chunks throughout space. This is the booming noise you hear when you’re in the machine.

These tiny fluctuations cause variations in the signal we receive, depending on how close the signal is to the activated gradient coil. All this data is compiled in a magical computational matrix called K-space. A funky algorithm then decodes those variations and couples them up with the strength of the signal to give us 1) How much signal is being blasted out at that particular moment 2) Where exactly that signal comes from within your body, according to the 3D map produced by the gradient coils

It then represents these values with a pretty picture!

Tl;dr tl;dr:

[livingforstars]

Milky Way Molecule Map - April 30th, 1997.

"Where are the Milky Way's gas clouds and where are they going? Stars form in gas clouds, and the motion of gas clouds tell us about the size and rotation speed of our own Milky Way galaxy. But gas clouds are hard to detect - they are composed mostly of nearly invisible molecular hydrogen and helium. Fortunately, at least small amounts of heavier gases co-exist, one of them being carbon monoxide (CO), which is relatively easy to detect at radio wavelengths. Therefore, over past decades, a team of astronomers have carefully mapped out the molecular sky to unprecedented clarity - to about four times previous resolution and about eight times previous sensitivity. The resulting map is shown above, rescaled and in false-colour, with dark blue being relatively low emission. The band of our Milky Way galaxy spans the middle."

[apod]

2024 March 26

Comet Pons-Brooks' Ion Tail Image Credit & License: James Peirce

Explanation: Comet Pons-Brooks has quite a tail to tell. First discovered in 1385, this erupting dirty snowball loops back into our inner Solar System every 71 years and, this time, is starting to put on a show for deep camera exposures. In the featured picture, the light blue stream is the ion tail which consists of charged molecules pushed away from the comet's nucleus by the solar wind. The ion tail, shaped by the Sun's wind and the comet's core's rotation, always points away from the Sun. Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks is now visible with binoculars in the early evening sky toward the northwest, moving perceptibly from night to night. The frequently flaring comet is expected to continue to brighten, on the average, and may even become visible with the unaided eye -- during the day -- to those in the path of totality of the coming solar eclipse on April 8.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240326.html