This week, we’ve touched on time lapse videos and astronomy, so let’s just round it out with an exoplanetary time lapse!
Stunning timelapse video captures 17-year journey of exoplanet around its star | Space
Beta Pictoris b’s footage was created by scientists who condensed videos created with real datasets that were collected between 2003 and 2020.
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If you have clear skies tonight, take a moment to look up. There will be a super blue moon overhead, and if last night’s preview is any indication, it will be glorious.
How Rare Is the ‘Super Blue Moon’ Appearing in Skies Later This Week?
This special event is the coincidence of two uncommon moon traits: A supermoon, which occurs when the moon appears larger than usual, and a blue moon, or the second full moon in a month.
More on what and how!
Blue supermoon: what is it, when it peaks and how to see it – NPR
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Posted in Science! | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, astronomy, inspiration, supermoon | 1 Comment »
“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”
— Kofi Annan
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Posted in Other, Writing | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, inspiration, life, purpose, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
I enjoy stumbling across an interesting new way of looking at or interacting with the world, and realizing that a non-zero number of people are highly invested in a thing I had no idea existed.
Exhibit A: The hyperlapse is a niche art form documenting travel via a time lapse plus camera movement, where both distance and time are compressed into one immersive experience.
Here’s an example video of a walk around Canberra, Australia’s capital city.
Journey Through Seasons: A Hypnotic Hyperlapse of the Canberra Centenary Trail
A year in the making, it follows a 145km walking track that circumnavigates Canberra, the capital of Australia.
This article from The Guardian discusses this particular project in more depth.
Canberra hyperlapse: a year walking 145km around Australia’s capital – squeezed into seven minutes
What a world.
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Posted in Likes | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts | 1 Comment »
To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.
— Ann Patchett
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Posted in Other | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, endings and beginnings, fall, summer, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Excerpt from a random discussion with my father, recreated here in case you too want to know:*
I’d include some interesting factoids about the speed of light or something, but I decided to make bread followed by a whipped cream cake (we finished the cheesecake last night), so I’ll end with this:
Posted in Science! | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
I have not tested this cookbook, but it looks fun and it’s free and the illustrations are excellent and there are copious speculative fiction references, and I dig the vibe.
The title is funny but I submit that it is too reductive. One doesn’t need to be a sad bastard to enjoy quick, easy cooking. I’ve also spent a non-zero part of my life eating versions of many of these recipes, and know them for the lifesavers that they can be.
Are you newly parted from the parental homestead? Newly parenting? Only have half an hour before you have to log on for a Warcraft raid? Are you just really, really freaking tired?
This may be the cookbook for you.
The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don’t die
By Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov
Illustrated by Marten Norr
This cookbook is all the recipes you already make, when you’ve worked a 16-hour day, when you can’t stop crying and you don’t know why, when the eldritch abomination you woke at the bottom of the ocean won’t go back to sleep. And hopefully, this cookbook gives you some new meal ideas. Even Sad Bastards have to eat.
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Posted in Food and... | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cooking, food, free | Leave a Comment »
You know how I’m always going on about how nice it is to not mow because duh, mowing is a drag, but also because it creates space for plants and insects we don’t usually see in your average suburban lawn? Well, the good news is that my backyard is busy. Not only do I have lemon verbena and apple mint and milkweed popping up from previous years’ seeds, along with aster and grapes and lamb’s quarters and sorrel and the like, yay, but I just met something new.
Meet the pigeon horntail, which is not a pigeon and not a dragon but is instead a giant insect native to these parts. I’ve never seen one before and I certainly didn’t expect to meet one while out refilling the bird bath.
Halfway into the yard a loud buzzing caught my attention. It sounded like a phone on vibrate, but no. It was instead a very large (and somewhat scary looking) wasp-like creature, about two inches long with a ginormous stinger-like protuberance (not a stinger, but I didn’t know it at the time). It appeared to be freshly born as the buzzing was from its sole moving wing. The second wing was still stuck to its body. I happened to have clear pitcher with me and popped it over top of the thing to get a photo, then looked it up.
Pigeon Horntail (Tremex columba) · iNaturalist Canada
Let’s see:
— Tremex columba, species of wasp also known as the horntail wasp or wood wasp
— native to eastern and western North America (good, so I don’t have to kill it like a lantern fly or murder hornet)
— does not sting or bite (phew, seriously, that tail thingie is no joke)
All good. They like decaying wood so I’m guessing its parental figure was attracted by the stack of wood we acquired after trimming the trees.
I’m not a bug person but it was an interesting new find. I watched until it freed its second wing. And off it flew.
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Posted in Other | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, home, interesting creatures | Leave a Comment »
It’s the end of August and I feel the way I did as a kid, watching the school year approach. The weather has mimicked Fall for weeks but now it’s almost here in truth. Cool winds, thunderstorms, and the inexorable sense that the seasons continue to turn.
And now, I’m missing something that is not yet gone.
To summer, with love.
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Posted in Other | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, memories, summer, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Wait, Fritos and Triscuits have about the same amount of sodium?
Triscuits: 170mg per 28g = 6/g
Fritos: 300mg per 50g = 6/g
Excuse me while I go get some more Fritos.
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Posted in Food and... | Tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, food, guilty pleasures, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
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