For anyone in need of some life advice:
Live every day of your life in a way that brings you closer to becoming Iron Man.
The thing about computer programming is that it’s a complete pain in the ass when you’re trying to figure out the problem, yet when you finally solve it, when you finally have that aha moment, the feeling of accomplishment is unlike anything you’ve felt when you’ve accomplished something. You think holy shit, I can make technology work, and that feeling is totally worth the long stretch of hours or even days when computer programming feels like a pain in the ass.
Fun fact: the plural form of octopus is actually octopodes (oct-op-o-tees) since octopus isn’t an English word nor a Latin word. Octopuses would be the English form if octopus was an English word. Octopi would be the plural form if octopus was a Latin word. However, octopus is a Greek word which means that the grammatically correct plural form of octopus is octopodes.
On March 4 the first quarter moon passes between Earth and the star Aldebaran, temporarily blocking our view of the star. This is called an occultation.
The occultation begins and concludes at different times, depending on where you are when you view it.
The event should be easy to see from most of the U.S., Mexico, most of Central America, the Western Caribbean and Bermuda.
Observers along a narrow path from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Hartford, Connecticut, will see the moon “graze” the star. The star will disappear and reappear repeatedly as hills and valleys on the moon alternately obscure and reveal it.
As seen from Earth, both Mercury and Venus have phases like our moon. That’s because they circle the sun inside Earth’s orbit.
Planets that orbit between Earth and the sun are known as inner or inferior planets.
Inferior planets can never be at “opposition,” which is when the planet and the sun are on opposite sides of Earth.
But inferior planets can be at “conjunction,” which is when a planet, the sun and Earth are all in a straight line.
Conjunction can happen once when the planet is on the opposite side of the sun from Earth and again when it’s on the same side of the sun as Earth.
When a planet is on the opposite side of the sun from Earth, we say it is at “superior conjunction.” As the planet moves out from behind the sun and gets closer to Earth, we see less and less of the lit side. We see phases, similar to our moon’s phases.
Mercury is at superior conjunction on March 6.
A few weeks later, the planet emerges from behind the sun and we can once again observe it. By the end of March we’ll see a last-quarter Mercury.
On April 20 Mercury reaches “inferior conjunction.”
Brilliant Venus is also racing toward its own inferior conjunction on March 25. Watch its crescent get thinner and thinner as the planet’s size appears larger and larger, because it is getting closer to Earth.
Finally, look for Jupiter to rise in the East. It will be visible all month long from late evening until dawn.
You can catch up on solar system missions and all of our missions at www.nasa.gov
Watch the full “What’s Up for March 2017″ video here:
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
metacommunicative trolling, academia style
one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)
Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!
“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”
“… This is Wordpress.” “…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.” “Nah son, don’t worry, it’s Wordpress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of Wordpress, it’s cool.”
“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to Wordpress.”
“All right.”
—-
“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”
“… I think I’ll manage.”
—-
“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”
“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”
“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”
“I can do this thing for you.”
—-
“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“
“Probably?”
—-
“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because - because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”
“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”
—-
“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”
“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”
“What?”
“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”
“That’s what we thought”
—-
“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”
“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”
“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!” “Er… no.”
“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”
“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”
“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”
“Yes. Definitely.”
—-
What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.
“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.
We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites - and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.
We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.
We narrate our stories.
All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition - all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.
When these skills are sold to you - when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them - they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.
You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.
Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.
Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.
Never make fun of someone’s passion because that is the thing that saves them from the world.
(via kluah)
the_bee_movie_but_every_time_they_say_bee_it_gets_randomly_faster_or_slower() by iforgotmylegs https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5o144h/the_bee_movie_but_every_time_they_say_bee_it_gets/?utm_source=ifttt
Full-time Computer Science student, reader, and gamer with a comics addiction.
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