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“[The] average daydream is about fourteen seconds long and [we] have about two thousand of them per day. In other words, we spend about half of our waking hours — one-third of our lives on earth — spinning fantasies.”

— The Storytelling Animal – the science of how we came to live and breathe stories.   (via mermaidshades)

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when i have a crush i dont kick my feet or twirl my hair instead i am in my kitchen at 3am pacing in circles with my hands clasped behind my back like a middle-aged divorced detective haunted by a cold case he just cant crack

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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.

Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.

If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries. 

Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest! 

An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.

Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.  

Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.  

Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.  

The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027. 

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space! 

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some het romance fic recs [in lieu of the fics i've taken down]! these all feature either gothic vibes, inadvisable love affairs, emotionally repressed heroines, or all of the above. i.e. if you liked my work & are looking for something vaguely similar to replace it, you might enjoy [in no particular order]:

aemond/oc

on the side as you shine, by audreyii_fic. daemon has a daughter with rhea rhoyce & she grows up in the traditional targaryen style, i.e. wildly insecure, in desperate need of therapy, & deeply in politically inconvenient love with her cousin. the plot is a fusion with the asoiaf prophecy stuff & riffs a lot on jon & dany's story beats, which is fun & makes it hard to predict what will happen next. rhaella is a sweetheart, aemond is the prince that was promised [or is he???], & aegon is a weirdly convincing exhausted single mom. obv can't speak for the author & the ending isn't written yet but it gives me strong fix fic vibes & is so far a lot lighter in tone than hotd itself. extremely funny & cute & well-written! [anything audreyii_fic posts is 100% worth checking out if you're into the fandom for it - she's also got some classic fics for zutara & jane/loki, to name a couple.] a poison tree, by Juliet_Capulet. this one's only a few chapters in & it updates slowly, so be warned [though it's already at a 70k wordcount - each chapter gives you a lot]. viserys & daemon's baby brother aegon doesn't die with their mom & instead grows up to be a likeable mild-mannered ned stark-esque citadel dropout. when his wife dies in childbirth he takes his baby girl alyssa to grow up in the red keep & is pretty alarmed to stumble into the brewing succession crisis there. it's an explicitly pro-green & pro-alicent fic so be aware that's where it's headed, but rhaenyra is handled really well imo & it's got a great eye for all the insane family dynamics. very detailed, slow-paced, heavy on political maneuverings & historical accuracy...a lot of fun! alyssa's still just a tiny tot so i don't have any sense what the dynamic will be with her & aemond but i'm curious to see where it goes.

aemond/sansa [i sense this is a growing field but i haven't found a whole lot that pings for me yet, much like the aemond/baela & aemond/rhaena stuff...still waiting for all of these to hit at least 100 fics in the tag]

witchcraft in your lips by slaymond. aemond dies as per canon & then wakes up in the current asoiaf timeline just in time to run into one alayne stone...still early in the fic & it seems to update slowly but i'm very into the dynamic so far. i love when characters lie about their identities &/or become obsessed with solving the mystery to another character's false identity...extra points if the obsession def has nothing to do with how much they want to kiss

aegon/oc [have mixed feelings about this ship bc i'm personally just not super into noncanonical versions of characters, & to write a non-horrifying aegon romance you basically have to make him ooc [i.e. not a rapist]. but if you're open-minded about deviating from canon there's a few fics out there i've liked]

let's see - i bingeread your skin makes me cry by scalyfreaks in a couple days! it's a modernday fic with horror vibes & an extremely troubled oc; aegon is a little less awful than canon [as in he doesn't patronize child pitfighting rings] but still a very very dark character, so be warned [it's a pretty intense dead dove fic with sexual assault & a bucketload of other warnings]. if you want to try something a bit lighter i enjoyed both Alys and Egg by glasscandles and Ashes and Stardust by Arameyy [both are sibling incest fics but otherwise haven't touched anything too heavy yet besides, like, the basic canonical horror of daily life in westeros; as warned aegon is ooc in both in the sense that he's a lot less shitty than canon, but for some people that might be a plus - it just depends what you're looking for in an aegon fic].

jaime/sansa [wait come back i swear this is a good ship don't go]

Lady Lannisport, by just_a_dram. don't be put off by the crackship i love this fic so much!! one of my all-time favorites! jaime is so much fun as a terrible no-good self-loathing romantic lead! it's a regency au where jaime's dad threatens to cut off his income unless he agrees to knuckle down & propose marriage to the blueblooded but financially destitute young sansa stark...neither of them is happy about it when sansa does her duty & accepts. i've read this like 3 times & jaime is literally pitch-perfect. every fic by this author is extremely good & she also has a ton of great jonsa fics that i def rec even if you're lukewarm on the ship [i like Soldiers, Spies, Sentiments, and Lies bc it involves a lot of lying & espionage & tangled loyalties which is the sweet spot for me].

other asoiaf/got crackships

Royal Flush, by astolat. obv another of those fic writers where you should just go take a look at everything she's posted. i'm partial to this one bc it's so nuts but also totally works. i'm not even going to list all the crackships it gets away with here bc there's too many but one of my favorite subplots is that through a series of unfortunate hijinks jaime winds up on the iron throne with tyrion as his hand, much to their mutual distress, & the two loser lannister brothers are then forced to muddle through how to at least not do such a terrible job at ruling that they're both summarily overthrown & executed. the starks are also there & robb is hanging on as king in the north &etc. don't look at the pairings & turn away in disgust before you at least try it! i swear you'll be surprised

other fandoms:

harry potter - i feel like it's safe to assume most people have heard of this book series so if the idea of tom riddle / hermione granger doesn't send you running then you should consider giving Blood and Gold by ObsidianPen a try. one of THE all-time villain/heroine fics on ao3 in my humble opinion. hermione goes back in time to murder tom in the womb & it doesn't work out how she planned...wink wink nudge nudge. they're both in their twenties & spend the whole fic elaborately conspiring against each other & playing i-know-you-know-i-know-or-DO-you mindgames & it's so so much fun.

peaky blinders - ok if you are a hotd fan & HAVEN'T watched this show you really really should...it's about an emotionally unstable family of eerily good-looking criminals set in 1920s northern england. the mc, tommy shelby, is a brilliant & calculating but traumatized ww1 veteran with freakishly blue eyes & a lot of barely repressed rage [he also happens to be the second son...are we seeing the parallels here??] currently building his family's criminal empire. there are actually multiple really good tommy/oc fics out there & if you're interested you should totally check out the tag. i'm partial to bury my heart on the coals (next to yours) by aquarioustommy... classic childhood friends to lovers stuff but with all the added angst of tommy being, you know, himself, & therefore uhh let's say a handful to be in love with. i'm also super into A Battle Joined by Ashling [a crackship rather than an oc fic] but it's only 4 chapters & unfinished which may understandably put some people off [still great though]

the borgias - another show that every hotd fan really needs to watch! politics & period costumes & dissolute aristocrats & crazy incestuous siblings! what more could you ask for? anyway go watch it & then read we get dark, only to shine by anghraine. THE cesare/lucrezia au fic of your dreams.

john wick - honestly these movies made zero impression on me but one day i randomly clicked on the children of aries by thedarklings bc i saw a cool tumblr moodboard for it & i'd never looked at one of those reader insert fics before & it's actually a great read? tbh the whole 2nd person pronoun & 'your name' thing is not really for me & i def wouldn't bother with it for any fic that wasn't really good on its own merits. this is that fic! a traumatized lady assassin gets her heart broken & poisons a lot of people & goes on a bunch of exciting james bond style guns-and-espionage adventures. john wick/reader & santino/reader & full of sweet sweet love triangle angst. also where there is no temptation, there is no glory is a much shorter santino/oc fic & super well-written [it sticks to canon though so there's no happy ending in sight, be warned].

frozen - ok yes i can see how a disney movie might feel way out of left field BUT i love elsa so much. there's just something about anxiety-riddled emotionally repressed blonde princesses for me idk. so two recs here: check the pipes for frost by therentyoupay - crossover ship with elsa/jack frost [from that animated movie about, uh, jack frost? tbh i haven't watched it & you don't need to for the story]. this is possibly the cutest thing i've ever read in my life. modern day elsa & jack become accidental penpals & slowly fall in unbelievably adorable long distance love. another fic i've read multiple times! also The Correspondence, by DemelzaLalondrelle. elsa/hans with realistic levels of delicious delicious scheming. tragically unfinished & probably abandoned, but soooo good. luckily there's also The Arrangement by the same author, which IS finished & is simply fantastic [also elsa/hans, an arranged marriage au].

jupiter ascending - do you love the targaryens but wish they were a little more fucked up? do you vibrate like a chihuahua over depictions of deeply deeply deeply dysfuctional codependent emotionally incestuous families of immoral rich people who are so obsessed with each other that they can't stop constantly trying to murder one other? do you want to watch the best & most incredible bad scifi movie ever filmed? do the words 'the genetically engineered flying werewolf called the heroine your majesty & she was visibly turned on' make you instantly think 'i am the intended audience for this media'? if the answer to any of these is yes then you should watch jupiter ascending & then go & read Deeds of Gift by abrassaxe. another villain/heroine fic! this one is so creepy & so weird & so full of insane family dynamics & i mean all that as the highest possible compliment. jupiter deals with the aftermath of saving the world & makes a deal to spend time with balem in order to keep the earth safe from destruction by extending her lifespan a while longer...is this a good idea? probably not. is jupiter having fun? it's complicated. does the extremely extremely weird but definitely not platonic thing going on between her and balem count as incest? fascinating question: you decide

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“I am forever denouncing this therapeutic obsession that governs our modern society, scared of living and haunted by death. We must protect ourselves from everything, heal from everything. Nowadays, food, music, painting, hiking… everything is repurposed as a method for healing, for keeping fit, for keeping healthy, when these activities are first and foremost opportunities for pleasure, desire, gratitude, knowledge, wonderment, and bonding with others. Our entire culture, as well as politics, imposes on all citizens this endless and nagging preoccupation with mental and physical health.”

— Jacqueline Kelen, L’Esprit de Solitude

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Good read on how sometimes something becomes too real too fast…..I need! To learn! To stop running from it!

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Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)

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awesome

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“there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so gorgeous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.”

— Ross Gay, excerpt of “Sorrow Is Not My Name”, in Bringing the Shovel Down (via antigonick)

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oh sharon olds i go back to may 1937 we're really in it now

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children’s choir singing ‘jóga’ by björk (2009)

x

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Tony Hoagland, Application for Release from the Dream: Poems

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"... you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home."

— James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

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John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

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Angela Carter, The Erl-King (from The Bloody Chamber)

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that Brian Eno quote about how whatever you find most repulsive about a medium (film grain, record scratches/fuzz, CDs skipping) will be the first thing you try and emulate once that medium is obsolete because it’s “the sign of a moment too powerful for the medium assigned to contain it”…. man…….