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cirrina.bsky.social
octo
@cirrina.bsky.social
200 followers 350 following 370 posts
3d artist
fetishized commodity
90% tubes 10% sleek duralumin

she/her in the boat way
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cirrina.bsky.social
robotgirl but its soft robotics. awkward gangly air-muscular arms and chunky hydraulically actuated silicone fingers. highly deformable girl
A photograph of the Octarm Continuum Manipulator, a flexible tentacle using McKibben air muscles and inspired by natural muscular hydrostats, particularly, as the name implies, the arms of the octopus. It is in three segments, each thinner than the preceding one; it is sheathed in a shiny black fabric. It is gripping a white cylinder. A robotic hand, 5 fingers, hard clear plastic palm but the fingers are segmented rectangular sticks of silicone. Visible leading into the hand and then into each finger are clear tubes, used to deliver the air pressure which bends the fingers.
May 3, 2025 at 11:30 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
thinking abt. getting programmed
the Beauty Micrometer, a cosmetological device from the 1930s intended to identify how best to apply makeup A picture of a Hansen Writing Ball, an early typewriter with the paper fed through the bottom and the keys arranged on a partial hemisphere on top
April 14, 2025 at 3:46 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
control drums are like nuclear rocket chastity cages
a cutaway diagram of a nuclear thermal rocket with control drums highlighted in blue and green.
April 12, 2025 at 10:05 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
developing a piece and every path leads to the objective best possible next move in the great sign-dance being for me to get devoured bodily just completely fucked up digested
A 3-D map of the hunting paths of 20 humboldt squids in a pack. They form a bundle of rough rectilinear helices
March 6, 2025 at 1:56 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
paracausal rotorcraft
A snippet of US army report ADB148401 reading '...battlefield. "<9> The attack helicopter's tremendous maneuver potential, throughout all four dimensions on the battlefield (depth, width, height, and time) place it in a...'
March 2, 2025 at 6:03 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
collecting quietly ominous passages from innocuous academic texts
A photo of a passage in Chapter 8 of Book 3 of Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. It reads: " . . . many succeeding geologists. The forces which have raised into the clouds the vast chains of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Ande,s must have been, it was deemed, something very different from any agencies now operating." A screenshot of a NASA technical report. It reads "The NASA space sciences program encompasses the total national effort to explore the solar system and beyond with unmanned instrumented spacecraft. There is nothing esoteric about it. It is an explo-"
February 17, 2025 at 9:29 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
i love burt rutan both bc hes maintaining the immortal spirit of bizarre airplanes and bc he looks exactly the way a wacky but genius inventor should look
a photo of burt rutan staring into the camera with piercing blue eyes. he's absolutely rocking out salt and pepper sideburns and a leather jacket
February 14, 2025 at 6:04 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
why are they like that
A tree kangaroo standing, holding a stalk of celery. The joey's face is poking out of the pouch A tree kangaroo standing on a branch, sticking its tongue out. It looks rather pleased with itself
February 12, 2025 at 1:50 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
from Unflown Wings
A racecar hummingbird ghost on an orange background. The shape of a sleep airplane, wings sweeping forward, is visible behind tumbling swatches of red and blue smoke, smearing together into a chaotic fuzz at the tail
February 8, 2025 at 3:42 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
The Fifth Royal Motor Yard's Bd.70 Rue Sastruga (what's black and white and over budget?) here seen tentatively entering a pillar forest on this chassis's first actual combat-expeditionary fielding. It's quite a warm day, only seven below.
A 3D model of a small cylindrical diorama/vignette depicting a tank, painted with black and white stripes, riding on large Archimedean screws, moving down a snowy slope, "peering" around a large dark gray monolith. The same vignette, from a different angle; the barrel is facing towards the camera, and both of the tank's eye roundels are visible.
January 16, 2025 at 12:51 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
NRO artifact retrieval
American sailors bring a film capsule from a Hexagon satellite on board via crane.
January 2, 2025 at 8:08 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
A string of floating radar corner reflectors, part of Project MOGUL's balloon train A diagram, for comparison purposes. Going left to right: Statue of Liberty / 305ft Washington Monument / 555ft Eiffel Tower / 1056ft Project MOGUL Balloon Train / 657ft A view of the Myasishchev M-17 Stratosphera, an experimental anti-satellite interceptor turned high-altitude reconnaissance plane. Six photographs showing the process of a weather balloon exploding from internal pressure. The intermediate stages resemble flowers, or perhaps basket stars. The ghostly sphere of expanding lifting gas is visible in photos 2-6.
January 2, 2025 at 6:07 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
thinking about balloon war
USS Valley Forge launching a stratospheric balloon for Project Skyhook. It is traveling in perfect pace with the wind; both the balloon's fungal stalk and the carrier's smoke are perfectly vertical cutaway of a Dreyf antiballoon laser mounted on an A-60 Four images. Top left: a C-130 approaches a floating parachute, striped red and white. it is perhaps half as wide as the C-130 is wide. The C-130 trails a delicate arrangement of curving metal rods behind it. Top right: the C-130 is right on top. Its shadow is visible on the parachute. Bottom left: the C-130 has made contact; the parachute is snagged on the metal scaffold behind it. Bottom right: capture is complete. The limp parachute drags behind the C-130; the crew is at this point presumably beginning preparations for payload retrieval. Launch of a Project MOBY DICK balloon at Holloman AFB, New Mexico. A translucent pupal ghost emerging from a truck-bed cage.
January 2, 2025 at 6:07 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
a screenshot text excerpt. It reads "SNAF planners found that interceptor crews were quite dependent on the opinions of air controllers or FDOs, even in essence psychologically subordinate to them. So the . . . " from https://cimsec.org/kamikazes-the-legacy-of-soviet-naval-aviation-pt-2/
December 23, 2024 at 5:08 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
▧
An advertisement from Argonne National Laboratory. Meterological diagrams, small text, over a hazy photograph of a pylon tower A photograph of a giant phantom jelly. Four velvet curtains and a soft bell; maroon-brown against a deep deep blue Yehudi light photographs in a paper that has been through the scanner enough that it can no longer be read; old creases and stains have been permanently marked onto it now in new ink
December 21, 2024 at 7:20 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
why are male ducks like that
a photograph of a male mallard. he is staring knowingly into the camera with a penetrating and disquieting gaze. is his beak curled in a slight smile? we may never learn a photo of a male mandarin duck floating on the water. It looks like a duck colored by an enthusiastic second grader, with several species of marine sponge grown all over it (the duck, not the second grader)
December 16, 2024 at 6:20 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
never totally finished this one but. accelerates by catching fuel packets with its big magscoop mouth before transitioning into a ram-assisted interstellar stage. Screams state songs in flight. Too many kilometers long; probably really beautiful to watch get snapped in half by some horrible accident
A "rocket-" imagine a bright yellow deep sea animal with a conical birdcage at each end, on a black field. A front view of the rocket's magscoop. Dizzying rings of whipple shields protecting fine superconducting hoops. An orthographic front view of the rocket. Rings and rings and rings, and fine yellow lines linking them
December 13, 2024 at 8:27 PM
cirrina.bsky.social
the minuteman transporter-erector trucks had a really unique kind of swag
A minuteman transporter-erector. A long truck, with a large white container trailer attached; on the side of the container are the words U.S. AIR FORCE. It is sitting still on a patch of concrete in a field of short grass. Chevrons adorn the front of both the container and the cab. A minuteman transporter-erector, front out of shot. The container is elevated at perhaps 50 degrees A similarly elevated transporter-erector. It sits behind a barbed wire fence. A transporter-erector seen from the read. The door for loading and unloading the missile and part of the inside of the missile container are visible.
December 8, 2024 at 5:38 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
holy shit sixteen blade coax rotors (various models of helicopters by Raúl Pateras Pescara)
Two helicopters facing each other in an empty field. They look like if you stapled two windmills, or perhaps many small wright flyers, to the top of a fossil airplane. They are beautiful. Their hollow flanks reveal fine organs. Their rotors- two coaxial, each with eight blades, configured as sets of four stacked one on top of the other- are cumbersome and laced together with fine wire. A similar helicopter, seemingly in the air. A small crowd rings it. This one has less graceful lines. A man is seated inside.
December 7, 2024 at 6:51 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
I WELCOME THIS OPPORTUNITY TO TALK TO YOU AND USE SOME CHARTS FOR ILLUSTRATION. I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT ASAT FIRST, ANTISATELLITE WEAPONS.
A screenshot of the first page of a congressional seminar presentation. It reads: GENERAL JOHN L. PIOTROWSKI, USAF AAAS CONGRESSIONAL SEMINAR ON STRATEGIC DEFENSE AND ASAT WEAPONS WASHINGTON, D.C. 27 SEPTEMBER 1989 I WELCOME THIS OPPORTUNITY TO TALK TO YOU AND USE SOME CHARTS FOR ILLUSTRATION. I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT ASAT FIRST, ANTISATELLITE WEAPONS. (the seal of the United States Space Command. It is somewhat faded) (a little down, and to the left) 19980302 075 - PRESENTATION TO - AAAS CONGRESSIONAL SEMINAR ON STRATEGIC DEFENSE AND ASAT WEAPONS 27 SEPTEMBER 1989 DTIC QUALITY INSPECTED (this is fading on the right end) PLEASE RETURN TO: SDI TECHNICAL INFORMATION CENTER BMDOTIC DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A Approved for public release; Distribution Unlimited 42935
December 5, 2024 at 3:54 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
really adore how freaky pterosaur skulls got
A collation of 13 side-profile photographs of pterosaur skulls, in various strange shapes. A collection of 19 side-profile drawings of pterosaur skulls, with some repeats from the previous image.
December 3, 2024 at 12:12 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
i need her badly
the Power Shovel Marion 6360 ("The Captain") viewed from the back, in between two large mounds of debris. Its body is a block painted in white and blue, sheathed by gray girderwork, riding on an assembly of squat caterpillar tracks The Captain viewed from the front. The mouth of its enormous shovel is visible, and its scale is more readily apparent. Two men standing next to one of The Captain's caterpillar tracks. Its scale is now Extremely visible: the two men are not even a third or a quarter as tall as the caterpillar tracks, let alone the entire power shovel. The Captain as viewed from the side. Debris is spilling from it shovel.
December 1, 2024 at 12:26 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
"im coming over you better not be raymond loewry plesiosaur"
my streamlined ass:
a photograph of "Flip," Kings College's robotic plesiosaur model. It might be described as a miniature plesiosaur which had been judiciously sanded down and plated with stainless steel until it resembled in some way an esoteric kitchen utensil
November 29, 2024 at 5:45 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
impossibly unbelievably enamored with the Jerome-de Bothezat Flying Octopus
(it actually had More than 4 props!)
(it's difficult to see in the photos, but its arms are braced with fine piano wire, which is kinda scary but also extremely attractive to my aesthetic sense)
A photograph of the Flying Octopus, rotors blurry with motion. The pilot can be seen hunched over in one of the girders. Two pictures- on the left, a photograph of the Flying Octopus, showing the end of one of its girders in great detail; on the right, a blueprint of the Flying Octopus, making clear the structural piano wire and the six broad blades on each propeller A photograph of the Flying Octopus over a grassy plain. Visible is a rope, used to measure height above the ground. Scrawled text says "De Bothezat helicopter / April 6, 1923" A photograph of the Flying Octopus low over the ground. Its props are seemingly still. Scrawled text reads "[unintelligible] with my highest regards and admiration from the inventor: Dr. J. deBothezat / Cook Field, Dayton, Ohio. / Flight made by the "de Bothezat Helicopter" February 21, 1923 in which the helicopter stayed in the air for 2min 45sec at a height of almost 15 feet. Picture taken during the descent of the helicopter. The rope hanging under the helicopter is for the purpose of checking its height above the ground. The total length of the rope of 23 feet. The distance between the marks is 10 feet.
November 26, 2024 at 3:47 AM
cirrina.bsky.social
sometimes i really really wish we lived in the timeline where magnus effect heavy lift balloons really took off but ultimately . i think in the swooping alien lines, the anachronism operation, they fundamentally thrive as creatures of what was not
A magazine cover depicting a Magnus effect balloon, seen from slightly below. An illustration of Magnus-effect balloons, seen from below, lifting bundles of logs. The caption reads "Rendering of a Magnus-type spherical airship conducting logging operations. Source: imgur.com" An illustration of a Magnus-effect balloon, seen from the front, flying over a forest, a bundle of logs hanging below it. The caption reads "Rendering of an LTA-20-1 conducting logging operations. Source: Magnus Aerospace Corp. promotional brochure" An illustration of a Magnus-effect balloon, seen from the side, carrying a tank beneath it. The caption reads "Rendering of an LTA 20-1 transporting a military armored vehicle on a cargo "shelf" behind the crew cabin. Source: EIR Science & Technology, 1986"
November 21, 2024 at 11:23 PM