Maya Rudolph hosting SNL and paying tribute to her mother, the late singer, Minnie Riperton in 2012

And in 2021

SHE DID IT AGAIN 2024

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

The GCs are Terfs. A specific type of transphobe. Quite a few British celebrity got recruited to their ranks and they have the money and clout to do a lot of damage unfortunately.

Terry passed away before Rowling started her downward spiral and played a significant role in creating the current toxic atmosphere around Trans rights in England . It is good to see that his daughter ,who is also a writer, stands up for human rights.

That’s despicable trying to “recruit” someone who’s DEAD. Not to mention there’s NOTHING in Pratchett’s books—including the ones of essays, articles, and speeches—to suggest he join in if he was alive.

And obviously his own kid would know his private opinions so hopefully the assholes will see her tweet and back the fuck off.

(GC stands for “gender critical”, when you see that it usually means that you’re talking to/about terfs who are trying to rebrand their image).

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Terf rhetoric basically revolves around throwing shit at the wall and then crawling around in anything that sticks, but the underlying transphobia is always present.

Rhianna Pratchett is the best.

“Terry Pratchett” is now a trending topic on twitter and everyone is just slamming the people who claim he would be transphobic. It’s been really nice to see

Also there’s this

And this. Bless @neil-gaiman

I’d already seen most of this on Twitter, but the Tom Hatfield tweet was new to me and got some laughs.

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary:

Time to remind folks of all this again, it seems.

Virtual reconstruction of the thermopolium discovered during the last excavations in Pompeii.  Made by the Spanish archaeologist Pablo Aparicio Resco, based on original photographs by Luigi Spina / Parco Archeologico di Pompei.

Note: “Thermopolium” is a popular word created by the archaeologists; there was no such word in Latin, the actual word is Caupona; the modern equivalent of Restaurant, and at the same time Cafe/Bar and fast food stall.

Say what you want about the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park production of Hamlet, but the choices made in that play WORKED. Having Hamlet wear a black hoodie and camo pants and him dramatically putting his hood up when he was pissed off was inspired. Having Horatio video tape Claudius on an iPhone camera from the side of the stage during the play within the play was hilarious. Having the play within the play be a hip hop dance number that represented the murder!?! Fantastic. Having Ophelia be a singer before she went mad and having a beautiful voice that everyone loved to listen to and then seeing her singing get worse and worse as she got nearer to death?!?! Hamlet pulling out his iphone after killing Polonius to show his mom a picture of his dad compared to a picture of Claudius and angrily swiping back and forth between the two as he said “What judgement would step from this… to this?” The crowd fucking lost it every time. Horatio singing to Hamlet as he died made me fully sob every time. The way they did the ghost on stage was so chilling and I can’t even accurately describe it, you just had to be there. Hamlet being deeply exasperated the entire time was just perfect. Hamlet and Horatio had a secret handshake. Laertes inexplicably carried an acoustic guitar case for much of the play which was very funny but also hit you with the heartbreaking implication that he had used to play while Ophelia sang and he stopped carrying it after she died. It was peak teenage-angst-hamlet and it was so dear to me. PLEASE if anyone has a recording, send it to me.

OMG EVERYBODY LISTEN UP!!!

THEY'RE GOING TO BROADCAST THIS PRODUCTION ON PBC FOR FREE!! YOU CAN WATCH IT!! PLEASE DO!!!

Going to try to tag everybody who said they wanted to watch it in the notes:

Broadcast date: May 10th, 2024!!

The full thing is playing for me at my PBS website right now:

obsessed with this sign i saw taped up outside the bat room at the zoo yesterday. the enthusiasm, the hand-written note, the bat drawing.

Hello hello! A little announcement that I’m currently running a limited edition print campaign! These full color giclée prints are available for just a few days and they all come hand signed by me.

Check them out here!

some pictures i took of the aurora borealis tonight!!

spiders have got to figure out contracting I need to be able to call my local spiders union and be like "hey can you send a guy out for a few days the fruit flies are back" and then pay it in spider currency. I'll learn the conversion rates. I'll be generous with my rounding. please.

There is absolutely nothing you could make up about American politics. Imagination is dead. It's useless.

important to note he is also offering to eat more worms as a test of valor

THE TWEET IS REAL??!?!

At that point its the worms talking

filmmakers and audiences and critics alike all need to start suspending their disbelief again

‘this doesn’t make sense’ so?????

important edition

traditionally the dead would be buried with coins on their eyes or in their mouth so that they could insert them within the 10 second countdown to continue playing and cheat death yet again. the practice fell out of fashion largely due to the invention of the home console

it is a parents responsibility to play good music during their child’s formative years. make sure the nostalgia playlist is a banger

Today's auroral shenanigans

Relatively speaking, yesterday night (May 11/12) was a bit of "not much" for aurora-watchers, compared to the night of the 10th/11th. (Which, to be fair, was a most unusual event, and it wouldn't be surprising if it wasn't equaled for a long, long time.)

Nonetheless, the Sun continues to be in an interesting mood at the moment... specifically the big sunspot region AR3664, which is the one responsible for the auroral extravaganza of May 10th. You can just see it in this next image, getting ready to rotate away from us around the Sun's rightward limb.

(For those interested in scale: that complex of sunspots is about fifteen times the diameter of the Earth. You could drop the whole planet into the middle of the biggest one and lose it. A timelapse video of its growth is over here at YouTube, if you're interested.)

As AR3664 continues to spit out CMEs and flares, the NOAA has issued a geomagnetic storm watch for today, tonight and tomorrow—with the suggestion that conditions like those of the night of the 10th may in the relatively short term be about to repeat themselves.

This is a "watch" rather than a "warning," reflecting some uncertainty over exactly how the various incoming coronal mass injections are likely to behave on reaching Earth orbit. (Also, the CMEs aren't being aimed straight at us, but off to one side as the sunspot region rotates further and further toward the sun's edge: so this adds somewhat to the unpredictability of it all.)

The animation below comes from the SOHO spacecraft's LASCO C3 coronagraph instrument. It starts on May 10th and runs through until early on the morning of May 12th. You can see the newest incoming CMEs right at the end of it.

(BTW, I think the two bright objects to right and left of the Sun are probably comets passing through, as LASCO images normally mask out any planets that would be in view.)

Anyway, as for what this means for auroral activity tonight? It's tough to tell as yet. The planetary K index (which expresses the relative strength of geomagnetic storms) has dropped back down into near-baseline levels at the moment.

But when those new CMEs and the solar wind associated with them hits the atmosphere, things may change suddenly.

We'll soon see...

And an afterthought: AR3664 will soon be off around the Sun's edge, and invisible to us. It'll be interesting to see what happens to it after that.

The Sun takes 27 days to rotate, as a whole: the poles take longer, the equatorial regions a shorter time. In a couple of weeks or less, what will greet us, rotating around toward Earth's POV on that left-hand side? Will AR3664 have dissolved and vanished away, as sunspot groups so often do... or grown even bigger?

ETA 1, 12 May 2024, 1820 UT: Like a kitty coughing up hairball after cosmic hairball, AR has popped yet another X-class flare.