The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is proud to announce the appointment of Kronos Quartet as its first ever Doomsday Clock Artist-in-Residence.
I guess I just never imagined a “Doomsday Clock” artist-in-residence, the world is, as always, full of surprises.
Having an interest in refrigeration in general I’ve sort of wondered how R-744, carbon dioxide works in more detail since it’s going to end up being a supercritical fluid in at least part of the cycle.
Turns out this is described as a “transcritical cycle” and I’m just really pleased to be seeing “transcritical” meaning something thermodynamic rather than an attack on human rights, happiness, and flourishing!
So anyway the carbon dioxide ends up above the critical temperature and pressure and rejects heat as a supercritical fluid before being brought down below the critical pressure and turned into a liquid and gas mix, the liquid sent to the evaporator(s) for cooling and the gas passing directly back to the compressor.
I wrote this on 2024-10-18:
This time of year there is a short bit of road on my drive to work where, if the sky is clear, I get the bright rising sun glaring into my peripheral vision from the left and the bright reflected sun off the windows of a building glaring into my peripheral vision from the right! It’s an experience!
That stopped after a few weeks when the whole thing with the seasons caused the sun to be rising farther to the south and no longer lining up. But now, it’s back! The sun is moving back the other way, due to the seasons thing!
This is one of the most predictable things in the world and yet it’s still an amazing new thing every time!
The two sides of Tumblr are like, Queer Tumblr is
you are a ✨valid✨ queer person even if you have long hair
and Horny Tumblr is…stuff…like…
everyone’s always like ohhh the bottoms sexual fantasies are always so fucking compilated and convoluted they always wanna be like some kind of European wild hamster digging through the undergrowth and you have to be the relentless bird of prey that is hovering over their den and ready to strike with deadly talons, and maybe the bed is a sand dune thats allows for the predator to take maximum advantage of the terrain. What about the top’s fantasies huh when does the top have something to say about all this. Sometimes I wanna be President Nixon in the last days of the administration and someone else is Erlichmann showing ass to comfort me. sometimes the top wants to get weirdly specific with it too okay
From Alexander the ok:
Again, I do feel that once you’re fitting thrust reversers onto your crop duster, it’s probably time to take a step backward and ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve.
Of all the aircraft ever designed the M-15 was certainly one of them
Newest sliver of new moon that I’ve seen in a long time!
Mostly, any locations in my dreams that are recognizably real places are from my childhood, by far the most common recognizably real-life people are my parents, and very little that is recognizably from the recent real-world makes it into my dreams. Even now there have only been a couple dreams in which respirators make any appearance. Even the place I’ve now lived in for 29 years is a very rare setting compared to my childhood bedroom. Mostly, my dream locations and dream characters are not apparently drawn from real life at all.
But I am a woman in my dreams now whenever anything makes it apparent if I am or not. I never was in pre-transition days.
I had a really amazing dream last night. I was sitting on the family room couch in my childhood home, with my dad (who died in 2004) sitting at the other end of the couch. My mom (who died in 2017) was doing some sort of minor cleaning in the room while I talked to her. Dusting furniture that has now been in my living room since about 2000. I was telling her that living as a woman is wonderful, and I wondered what it might have been like to have been able to grow up as a girl. What things might she have taught me, what things might we have done together?
It was a really nice dream.
So I was watching this YouTube video of a guy showing off his fire extinguisher collection, because I love looking at people’s collections. It then dawned on me, huh, fire extinguisher collectors, I hadn’t really thought about it but I’m sure there’s a whole community, complete with weird drama and everything. I’m not judging, not only did I watch the video, I have, for example, a collection of radioactive items, I understand weird collections.
After going through all the fire extinguishers on display in his display case, he moves on to showing the various extinguishers that are in working order and scattered around his house for use in case there’s a fire. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that a fire extinguisher collector is very prepared for fire, has a lot of fire extinguishers all around his home. But, uh, I looked up at the fire extinguisher I have in view of where I was sitting and remembered that if I lean forward there’s another one at the other side of the room, and there’s two others in two other rooms. It’s not a very big apartment. Maybe I’m on track to become a fire extinguisher collector myself?
I took the week of Christmas off from work and I bought a box-o-wine since I figured, living in Wisconsin, I’d want to drink. I used to buy bag-in-a-box wine quite a bit but more recently I have not because I’m not drinking as much as I used to. (I’m happier now, as a girl.)
So anyway as I got toward the end of it I experienced that box wine problem, trying to get the last of the wine out of the bladder. It’s as if the wine has prostate problems!
You are welcome, for this observation. I’m here to help.
After reading Maya Deane’s Wrath Goddess Sing and realizing that reading novels feels different to me now, I pulled my very yellowed copy of C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel off the shelf just to see what I thought of it now.
I feel emotions now, on estrogen, in a way I never did before in my life, so that’s one thing that makes reading stories feel very different from before. Also, it’s been probably near 35 years since I’d read Gate of Ivrel and it’s interesting how while I remember the general concept of the series I remember very very little of the specifics after all these years! And now I’m part way into Well of Shiuan.
I remember liking the Morgaine stories, but I think now I’m realizing why in a way I did not understand as a teen.
Vanye did not exactly have a happy childhood, did not get along well with people generally, and ends up forced out entirely alone, where he meets Morgaine, who is completely alone. They end up setting off together and barely talk to each other, and Morgaine pretty well never explains anything to him, he can only obey whatever scattered instructions she gives him. Along the way here and there they’ll meet someone whose life is going downhill so fast they feel that joining this pair is their best option, going on some painful, frightening mission that they don’t understand.
That is to say, it felt very realistic! Just like real life! The usual stories always had all these people constantly talking to the protagonist, telling them stuff. Totally unlike how real life worked for me. I assumed it was a story-telling thing, you have this very unrealistic thing of everyone talking to the main character constantly, and maybe all the characters always talking to each other, so that the reader has something to read.
Now, as a woman, people actually do talk to me, tell me what’s going on. It’s very strange to suddenly realize that maybe the part of the story where people are telling each other what’s going on was not meant to be basically like the part of the story with the dragons, as far as how similar to the reader’s real life it is.