Reminder that LISA could have been a joint NASA/ESA project and probably launched earlier if NASA had actually had funding.

“Resembles” is kind of an understatement. It’s the same type of interferometry in both cases, which is in fact named for Michelson. Like the M-M experiment, LIGO and LISA are searching for evidence of relative motion along the two arms. It’s only the theorized source that differs— and the amount of engineering that’s…

Clearly I’ve been hanging out with a fashion-backward crowd, then.

How does this garment even work? Is it a hoodie AND a cape/jacket thing? Is he wearing a jacket over the hoodie? Are they one item of clothing? What is happening and where do I get one for myself...

Does poetry about scientists count? Eh, y’know what, I’ve just decided it does. Here you go.

Who remembers the terrible, terrible promos for season 1, where Liv was seductively licking blood off her fingers?

“Snoke” continues to sound to me like something you can buy at Ikea for $149.99 in your choice of black-brown, white, or birch-effect.

Woops. That asterisk was the leftovers of an extended story about my failed attempt to use Shillelagh with a warlock pact blade, which I edited because I figured no one cared.

^ This.

At the risk of being called a spoilsport, I agree, this is pretty screwed up. Especially given that we’re talking about a Native American indentured servant girl in colonial America, possibly with a mental disability, convicted of murdering a white girl on the basis of a confession given under pressure after repeated…

On the contrary. Once upon a time, I developed a crush on someone who subsequently told me she loved Star Trek Into Darkness. After the inevitable languishing in mental agony, I found that my passion had not dissolved in the face of this apparently insurmountable barrier — a gulf wider than any quirk of mere politics,…

I would joyfully watch a Vrataski-centric prequel. And I don’t think it would have to be Cruise-free, either. See, I want villainous!Cage to feature: the smarmy, shallow, fake-soldier advertiser whose presence pervades the movie, cheerleading people onto the hellish battlefield that Vrataski experiences on repeat. It…

Ha, yeah. As a young grad student in a fairly unrelated field, I’ve gotten asked about this enough that I’m starting to get snippy. Carroll must be completely sick of it. And it’s kind of a catch-22... if he says anything half-hearted about not rejecting it outright, reporters will run sensationalist headlines, but if…

Honestly, I was glad Lowell died before he wore out his welcome. His character was the kind of character I can only handle in low doses— sweet, but cliche, and not particularly plot relevant outside of his involvement with Blaine’s scheme.

Same... same.

The Star Trek: Phase II fan production did that, actually!

Yep. And I think it’ll be going strong into its second generation of readers. The majority of the twenty-somethings I know were childhood HP fans to some degree, and plan to give/read their kids the books.

Storytime: when my dad was in his twenties working at his first job after college, he managed to get a little time on a company computer to play around. So he wrote up some code to render an image of the Mandelbrot set. It took a long time to compute, of course, so he was very proud of the final result.

Don’t fight, children. The frumious bandersnatch has many titles, appropriate in context!

Nice. If anybody can adapt Annihilation, this guy seems like a likely choice— based solely on Ex Machina, mind you. And the fact that he seems to be realistic about the difficulties of a direct adaptation of a book like Annihilation.