Stochasticity

art by Robert McCall

“One of my earliest Space Colony paintings was based on the giant ‘Model 3’ cylindrical habitats envisioned by Gerard O'Neill. I imagined the clouds forming at an ‘altitude’ around the rotation axis.” ~artist Don Davis

Linda Codega has interviewed The Fifth Season Roleplaying game co-developer Tanya DePass for Gizmodo and Tanya dishes on some of the details of how the game together and what to expect in play.

https://gizmodo.com/fifth-season-rpg-nk-jemisin-tanya-depass-green-ronin-1850018440

Engineer Karen Leadlay working on the analog computers in the space division of General Dynamics, 1964 via r/TheWayWeWere found here https://ift.tt/VjnGhsY by @mrnguyen123

— excerpt from feminist theory: from margin to center by bell hooks

Interesting.

Unless you were a tech at NASA back in the day, when one time some hydrogen a) escaped in a particular building, and b) caught on fire. This was extremely difficult because hydrogen does NOT burn on the visible spectrum humans evolved to see (and flee). Rather, it technically does, but it’s so pale that in practice, no one could see it. Additionally, pure hydrogen burns without smoke and with so little ambient heat that you can’t really sense it till you walk into it. So, per the lore, for a few days all the techs in that building just walked around brandishing brooms in front of them like lances. If your broom lit on fire, congrats! You have located more burning hydrogen! Do not proceed!

oh my god it's real and it was LITERALLY called "the broom method" holy shit

I’ve been waiting for a couple of YEARS to be able to show off this new game project. The Fifth Season Roleplaying Game, now crowdfunding on Backerkit, is designed for you to play out adventures and stories set in the world described in the Broken Earth trilogy of novels by N.K. Jemisin—a world where constant and unstable tectonic and volcanic activity threaten all life; a world whose peoples have learned to adapt in order to survive. It is a world where everyone learns that Father Earth hates his children and is always trying to kill them, where metal rusts and even stone crumbles, and the best you can do is be prepared for the next disaster. In the world of the Broken Earth, community—the comm—is everything, because in community there is support and a chance to persevere. You and your fellow players take the roles of members of such a community, working to overcome internal difficulties and external threats, in order to be ready when that inevitable Fifth Season comes. Are you a lifelong native of this place, someone everyone has recognized from childhood? Maybe you’re a more recent addition to the comm, someone who’s come from a distance, contributing something to the comm that makes the possibility of your secrets and past catching up to you worth it. Or perhaps you are an orogene, one who was born to sess the movements of the tectonic plates, gifted with a forbidden power to still the shaking earth and bleed heat in your environs away until frost coats everything in a perfect circle around you.

These may be times of peace and plenty, but strife and lean times are ahead, with the next Season of Death looming like a dark thunderhead on the horizon.

Welcome to the Stillness.

Ex Libris Catalogue 11: Bauhaus 1984-1985 [Cooper Hewitt,… https://ift.tt/2SS64tV

Bride of the God Bel, Henri-Paul Motte

Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1980)

The bird is freed so here we are

This sounds fun as hell.

fun fact, i thought jára cimrman was a real person until my mom told me when I was 13

Weakling.

I know people who were willing to argue that Cimrman was a real historical figure at their maturita exams.

arguing about Cimrman’s realness is actually a glorious way to fuck with many teachers, since almost the whole country is in on the joke that Cimrman was a real person, when you convincingly argue that Cimrman invented/wrote/discovered XY, the teacher is effectively trapped because either they have to accept your bullshit explanation or admit that Cimrman is not real and therefore break the joke and betray the national pride

many of my highschool teachers would preemptively inform us that they will not accept Cimrman as an answer (“we know, we know, he helped invent everything, write about the other people”) just to avoid this

ok but also HE’S TRANS

I also love how many statues, commemorative plaques, places of pilgrimage and establishments there are to commemorate him and his actions. 

some of my favorites

Here is a statue of Master Cimrman, depicting him lying face down on the ground after he was kicked out of a train near Kaproun. Next to the Masters back you can see a part of memorial cairn, also dedicated to Cimrman. (author of photo: Strnadci) 

Portrait of the Master on educational Cimrman path from Lomnice. (The bust is most likely not an accurate depiction of Cimrman, because the sculptor didnt know how Cimrman really looked like, so this is just what he came up with) 

(photos by: Michal Kupsa ) 

An unfinished proto “selfie” or “autobust” near Uherský Brod by Cimrman himself. It is said he might have made it some time after crashing with an airship named Karel, constructed by Ferdinand von Zeppelin… Unfortunately as it usually is with autoprortraits of Cimrman, the facial features didnt survive the harsh environment and time…But we know its him.  (photo from Fry72, Karel Frydrýšek) 

..and so many more.. 

#ohhh this is the guy who found scientific proof that Vegemite behind your ears really does deter drop bear attacks#and why naturalised aussies don’t need to worry about it but recent immigrants still need to take precautions#fascinating reading if you ever get the chance

Aside from all of that there is a whole number of things, species and objects named in his honor:

His sweatshirt reads, “Pro-child, pro-family, pro-choice”. His sash says “honored guest”. His pin says, “honorary sister”.

David Warner as Evil Genius

Time Bandits

Rest well, David Warner.

BRINGING UP BABY 1938, dir. Howard Hawks