Notices by Strange Attractor (strangeattractor@refactorcamp.org), page 5

@riga @zacharius Here's the video of the bag of trash mentioned in your video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq7DDk8eLs8

Did another playtest of our #DrWho #RPG with my wife.

I think the hardest part of adapting Dr. Who to a tabletop RPG is just that EVERY SESSION is an entirely new setting, premise, villain, and cast of NPCs. Plus your 2 leads are separated from any persistent social context.

So the techniques for building on last week's adventure that we'd use in any other RPG to create a new scenario don't work at all. Nor do the usual tricks of using PCs' relationships or NPCs' agendas. Hmmm. #GameDesign

GOD these Hong Kong protestors are so fuckin brave.

I'm terrified of what the Chinese government will do to them in reprisal.

Their lives must basically be forfeit, right? But even knowing that, they're still out there flowing like water, inventing new protest tactics daily, making a last stand for the last bastion of their freedom. They're heroes. I wanna cry.

Why aren't we doing that in the US, where the risk of civil disobedience is so much less?

It turns out, mapping the galaxy is a much more difficult job than anticipated, but using the light from Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that brighten and dim according to their size, we can pretty accurately tell distance. By using these stars, we can build a map of the distribution of stars in our galaxy...

So here's a 3D map of Cepheid variable stars, in our very own Milky Way galaxy, released in a survey done back in February. It reveals that the Milky Way isn't as flat as we thought, but rather a little bit warped or twisted. Although rare, it's far from unheard of to see a spiral galaxy with a wobble to it, and quite apparently our galaxy is among them.

Our galaxy is not flat, which means that a whole lot of art is out of date.

We don't know yet what caused the warping effect, could be a recent interaction or collision with another galaxy or even dark matter. At this point, it's still to early to tell.

Yesterday between playing a charity gig, nursing an almost migraine, and practice, I calmed myself by picking the wineberries. (form of Japanese raspberry - so so sweet and slightly sticky to the touch, not sold in any store and supremely delicious) This is all in a 6ft square.

Pictures show: 1. denim up, so avoid the MANY thorns (tiny and quite invasive all along the stalk & leaves) 2. I crawl under that to get inside 3. here's how they grow 4. yum :)

#fruit #garden

OK, polls closed, it is decided, I'm going to learn to play/sing the Space Battleship Yamato song on accordion next!

Besides being a kickass song, it has a lot of good memories for me. Being able to sing 宇宙戦艦ヤマ in Japanese at karaoke helped me make friends with my coworkers when i was teaching English in Japan back in 2000. #mastoMusic

@masu
I mostly read IT books in English. Here's a few books that come to mind.

Finnish classic: The Egyptian (Mika Waltari)
Humoristic lighter reading: Meet the grump (Tuomas Kyrö)
Childrens book about programming (if you have kids): Hello Ruby (Linda Liukas)

It might be difficult to find some of these in English though.

On my mission to read a book from every country in the world, I finished all the countries starting with A! And I wrote about them: http://books.balaena.space/a-countries-finished/
#books #reading

Hey, sometime after I finish my PhD...

...would anyone be interested in being in a Fediverse Virtual Choir to sing some of my work so I can put recordings online?

Eric Whitacre did this (not on the Fediverse) and it worked super well. I... definitely don't have his resources, but I can probably film a conducting track that people can sing to.

My practice was interrupted by chasing a bird off our hazelnut tree so I could gather this rich harvest (one of 5 nuts on the tree - it was a baby when we planted it three years ago) #smallstories

The internet is full of advice on how to be a good speaker. Remarkably little is written about how to be a bad speaker – luckily there is a text by the wonderful Kurt Tucholsky on this topic. I translated it here: https://rixx.de/blog/advice-for-a-bad-speaker/

Discrete Differential Geometry: An Applied Introduction [pdf]
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/DGPDEC/paper.pdf

(submitted by adamnemecek)

View from my hammock

/r/quebec has a running series of memes about the abuse french takes in quebec and I absolutely love it