Hardspace Shipbreaker will have you clinging to the side of a ship in zero-G one second, trying to laser cut your way into a section of hull, and then have your screen looking like this the next:

Growing up is realizing that you have an energy bar, video game style, and it refills very slowly.

Why does Mike "I don't know anything about that" Johnson have the "Guy who knows stuff" job.

Did Jozef Gabčík even TRY to have a fair and open dialogue in the marketplace of ideas with Reichsprotektor Reinhard "The Butcher of Prague" Heydrich before shooting him? "Hitlers Hangman" probably had a family too, nobody deserves to die for a difference of opinion.

Aliens are terrifying because what if they do everything to us that we’ve been doing to Africa for the past several centuries.

“But he who neither himself understands nor, in listening to another, takes this to heart, he is a useless man.”

- Hesiod

Reading about the 1948 Donora Death Fog, where industrial fumes from US Steels Donora Zinc Works formed a toxic fog that killed 20 people, and came across this gem:

Focusing on writing about the Alhambra for several university assignments has really opened my eyes to how structures aren't just piles of bricks, they're living organisms so full of stories and memories that are born and grow old and eventually wear away and die. Buildings are beings.

Occurred to me in the midst of a splitting migraine that, considering the cause behind headaches remains a scientific mystery, my misery could be the work of several very spiteful, very small gnomes with icepicks behind my eyes.

You know, we could just put a giant corkboard in the middle of town and everyone could leave messages on it like twice a month. I'd be kind of okay with that, if it comes to it. Although I'm quite lazy so I might not go.

I'm aware that a 3D being essentially "falls apart" in a 4D space due to lacking the necessary 4th dimension to remain intact, but how does this actually manifest? Do you collapse into a messy pile of stuff? Do you vaporize? Do you disappear to our 3D perception?

@aptshadow.bsky.social's work, "Children of Ruin" was the inspiration for my most recent Stellaris run of artificially-uplifted boundlessly curious space octopi, which has in turn inspired my own writing ideas. Is this what coming full circle feels like?

Is there a word for writers block, except it's all the time and never goes away and you can never start or finish anything? All my energy is consumed by the white void of a blank document and it's becoming a hindrance.

Another Islamic map because I can't get enough of them, this is a late 9th century world map created by one ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, whom gave his name to the Balkhi School that he founded. Can you see the similarities to the previous map?

Another medieval Islamic world map, the "Surat al-Ard" (Image of the Earth) was produced by the Arab writer & geographer Ibn-Hawqal in the 10th century and depicts the known world in the simplistic political style of the Balkhi School. Annotations by UCSB Prof. @sbalaghi.bsky.social

Another map we discussed in class, this is the Arab cartographer Al-Idrisi's "Tabula Rogeriana", a 12th century world map produced for King Robert Hauteville of Norman Sicily. Drawing from Ptolemies Geography, it orients the south towards the top, a common practice of medieval Islamic cartography.

Created in the 2nd century CE by the Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy, the Geography depicts a remarkably accurate version of the known Roman world, and established our modern coordinate system. It was heavily built upon by the Islamic world, and became influential during the Renaissance.