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BREATHE DEEP THE GATHERING GLOOM

@youpublicmenace

(Ninety percent of all magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.)
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Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

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It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

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It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

MOON LANDING DAY IS THURSDAY!

HAPPY MOON DAY EVERYONE!!! 🌙

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'the human body is perfect god doesnt make mistakes' what about wisdom teeth then. huh. gonna let those bastards grow in and fuck up your jaw for god. didnt think so

also the exploding appendix

there's an entire book about all the ways the human body is fucked up, but the highlights I remember are: -The blood vessels for our rods and cones in our eyes don't run behind them but rather in front of them. It's like putting the power cables *over* a camera's lens -the nasal sinus cavities fucked up during evolution. when our skulls shortened, we went from having a straight shot from one end to the other to having basically a basin which can collect mucus, which then has the actual exit for the chamber at the top of it. this normally isn't a problem bc cillia can work viscous mucus up it, but when we get sick and produce super watery mucus, it no longer works, which is why our noses get stuffed up. the book is called Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. I recommend it.

Most mammals can’t get scurvy. They make their own Vitamin C. But in primates, the gene to make it is broken. Normally, when an important gene breaks, the organism dies and has no surviving descendants, but when it broke a few million years ago, our ancestors were living in a lush climate with lots of fruit and survived the failure just fine.

Then humans invented fire and clothing, and moved to colder climates where fresh food was only available part of the year, and scurvy was born.

And our reproduction, oh heavens. There are SO MANY WAYS that human reproduction is fucked up that simply DO NOT APPLY to other animals, even the our nearest relatives, the great apes. When a gorilla is giving birth, she finds a nice hiding place in the trees, squats down for like half an hour, and pushes out a baby. Humans, not so much. In fact, the outcomes of unassisted childbirth in humans are so poor that most anthropologists agree that we must have invented midwifery in some form before we became fully human.

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Best trick I ever picked up. Seriously.

I have also learned this is great for [PICK A COOL NAME FOR A SHIP] and [LOOK UP THE FACTS ABOUT OXYGEN LEVELS] and [WHAT’S THE WORD] and [DOUBLECHECK CHARACTER’S EYE COLOR] and ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

Anything that isn’t critical in the moment, and could be filled in later while I’m currently trying to burn through writing pages that will be lost if I don’t get them out right now? Brackets.

This is seriously the best advice, and it really helps put it into perspective that the first draft is just that- a draft. There’s no reason to agonize over a particularly tricky bit of writing when you could just leave it in brackets and skip to the good parts, the parts you’ve visualized. I also use brackets for [fact-check this], [use a stronger verb], [is this in character?] and other notes as I write, just so I don’t forget what I want to work on when I go back and edit. 

This works for academic writing too. If you know where you’re going just leave yourself notes to fill in later. I do this all the time,

I've been unable to break through the wall of stuff i have to research in the latest chapter of my fic. I think this will help!

dating-type app but instead of matching for romance it connects writers/artists+ who don't want to do research with autistic people with the appropriate special interest

the creators get the needed information without needing to filter out filler and translate technical jargon, and the autistic person gets someone who's willing to listen to their infodumps. what is there to lose

!!! Hello there!

Everything. I'm working on a race of arachnid-based aliens (some cephalopod, some snake, some big cat thrown in along with a few other things, but they're mostly that) and I will take any and all information I can get. Social structures. Looking into mimicry. How they react to different stimuli.

I'm okay at bigger animals, but I'm a bit out of my depth when we start to veer into the insectoid. I crave knowledge.