NOAA just issued the Severe (G4) level geomagnetic storm watch for May 11, 2024    

Yeah, the Sun sneezed pretty hard, a number of times, on May 9th: five CMEs, apparently. :) (Check this page and scroll down to the middle "Coronal mass injection" window to see a video of the sneezing as it happened, courtesy of the LASCO instruments on the SOHO solar observation satellite.)

As a result, what we have incoming now may be the strongest geomagnetic storm since 2005, if it holds to its predicted K-index strength of Kp 8 (on a scale of 0-9).

A quick note to those who're new at aurora-watching: The predictive diagrams above and below are not like those we're used to seeing for events such as solar eclipses. They are not illustrations or indicators of precise locations where aurorae will be visible. They are estimates of the effects of constantly changing near-space conditions—meaning the interaction between the incoming solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field and upper atmosphere. Though a prediction may suggest that you're not in an area of visibility, this may change without warning while the event lasts. So if a diagram suggests you're a near miss, go out and take a look at active times, anyway. Conditions may have changed, and surprises are always possible.

Peak maybe-we'll-see-it time for Irish and UK people looks to be around 2100ish. (Video courtesy of ITV [UK] weather guy @ChrisPage90 over at the Once Upon A Bird place.)

The North American forecast looks like this (NOAA video via ex-Birdie-based @GrandForksNDSkyColor):

...And it looks like our local forecast, for a blessed change, suggests we might actually see something. (That band of cloud out in the Atlantic won't be here until tomorrow evening.)

I think we'd better go out and uncover the lawn furniture. :)

Pertinent to this event: Space Weather Prediction Center issues its first G4 (severe electromagnetic storm watch) warning since 2005

...Other useful resources for those interested in space weather generally, and solar weather:

ETA: For those of you who were looking for an Asian map of the auroral oval: these seem few and far between. This turned up after some searching, at the Meteologix page.

...Having looked at the way the oval is acting, though, it looks like visibility is going to be limited pretty much to the far north of Asia.

ETA 2: Check out this assortment of European webcams. Half of them show glowing pink skies, and a lot of these are NOT sunsets. Pink aurorae are typical of high-energy events.

ETA 3: The zones of auroral visibility for this storm are proving much larger than predicted: on this side of the Atlantic, aurorae were being seen as far south as northern Africa. If you’re anywhere near a previously-predicted “live zone” in North America, and your weather’s good, go out and take a look tonight and see what you can see.

In some places the auroral display has looked like a faint haze that seems to cover nearly the whole sky. If you have a smartphone, use it to take time exposures if possible. It will be able to see things you can’t.

Clear skies and good seeing tonight, everybody!

In 2020 we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Good Omens book on the May 1st, only to learn later that it was not the correct date! :D

Happy Book Wrong Birthday! :D <3

Happy Book Right Birthday! :D <3

Dear god I love this fandom.

Happy nice and accurate book birthday, good omens <3

Please go watch Sex Explained on Netflix. Not only is it a great resource for the basic sex education that is sorely lacking in the U.S., but some of ya’ll need to take a deep breath and remember the difference between fantasy vs reality. This purity culture thing that we’re going through right now is directly harmful to responsible, healthy sexual expression. BTW this woman, Lisa Diamond, is a noted psychologist and has been pushing for greater understanding of womens sexuality as a whole.

!!!!!!!!!!!

this is the single worst way i've ever read to describe an erection, frank herbert

Never apologize for your "cringe" fanfic sex scenes again

Not ever. 🤣

Dog begs for lollipop and is then baffled about what to do with it.

(Source)

Dinluke Sketchbook Cover-art

30-34 pages

Coming soon✨

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES season one | episode twenty-five; the devil in the dark Mister Spock, you are second in command. This will be a dangerous hunt. Either one of us by himself is expendable. Both of us are not. Captain, there are approximately one hundred of us engaged in this search, against one creature. The odds against you and I both being killed are 2,228.7 to 1. 2,228.7 to 1? Those are pretty good odds, Mister Spock. And they are of course accurate, Captain. Of course. Well, I hate to use the word, but logically, with those kind of odds, you might as well stay.

...I had opportunity some while back to do a brief analysis of Who Gets Into The Most Trouble in classic Trek. And the number of times when Spock waits until everybody's distracted and then runs off on his own (citing logic, because of course he would) to expose himself to yet another kind of trouble, is truly hilarious. :)

His Captain's glancing-around-at-unseen-audience "oh God, am I actually going to buy into / let him get away with this again?" expression in the reaction shot is therefore right on the money.

Downtown Los Angeles, CA 2024

Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries:

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."

…See also the culinary variant: “Do you use all those spices?!” (eyeroll)

(and yeah, on occasion we’ve had the original one too. Funny how those people tend not to be guests here more than once. I think we get filed under “weird nerds, might be dangerous”. [dry smile])

Crested saguaro in the moonlight. Bumble Bee, Az.

Dress

mid 1890s

The John Bright Collection

how to start reading again

from someone who was a voracious reader until high school and is now getting back into it in her twenties.

start with an old favourite. even though it felt a little silly, i re-read the harry potter series one christmas and it wiped away my worry that i wasn't capable of reading anymore. they are long books, but i was still able to get completely immersed and to read just as fast as i had years and years ago.

don't be afraid of "easier" books. before high school i was reading the french existentialists, but when getting back into reading, i picked up lucinda riley and sally rooney. not my favourite authors by far, but easier to read while not being totally terrible. i needed to remind myself that only choosing classics would not make me a better or smarter person. if a book requires a slower pace of reading to be understood, it's easier to just drop it, which is exactly what i wanted to avoid at first.

go for essays and short stories. no need to explain this one: the shorter the whole, the less daunting it is. i definitely avoided all books over 350 pages at first and stuck to essay collections until i suddenly devoured donna tartt's goldfinch.

remember it's okay not to finish. i was one of those people who finished every book they started, but not anymore! if i pick up a book at the library and after a few chapters realise i'd rather not read it, i just return it. (another good reason to use your local library! no money spent on books you might end up disliking.)

analyse — or don't. some people enjoy reading more when they take notes or really stop to think about the contents. for me, at first, it was more important to build the habit of reading, and the thought of analysing what i read felt daunting. once i let go of that expectation, i realised i naturally analyse and process what i read anyway.

read when you would usually use your phone. just as i did when i was a child, i try to read when eating, in the bathroom, on public transport, right before sleeping. i even read when i walk, because that's normally a time i stare at my screen anyway. those few pages you read when you brush your teeth and wait for a friend very quickly stack up.

finish the chapter. if you have time, try to finish the part you're reading before closing the book. usually i find i actually don't want to stop reading once i get to the end of a chapter — and if i do, it feels like a good place to pick up again later.

try different languages. i was quickly approaching a reading slump towards the end of my exchange year, until i realised i had only had access to books in english and that, despite my fluency, i was tired of the language. so as soon as i got back home i started picking up books in my native tongue, which made reading feel much easier and more fun again! after some nine months, i'm starting to read in english again without it feeling like a huge task.

forget what's popular. i thought social media would be a fun way to find interesting books to read, but i quickly grew frustrated after hating every single book i picked up on some influencer's recommendation. it's certainly more time-consuming to find new books on your own, but this way i don't despise every novel i pick up.

remember it isn't about quantity. the online book community's endless posts about reading 150 books each year or 6 books in a single day easily make us feel like we're slow, bad readers, but here's the thing: it does not matter at all how many books you read or what your reading pace is. we all lead different lives, just be proud of yourself for reading at all!

stop stressing about it. we all know why reading is important, and since the pandemic reading has become an even more popular hobby than it was before (which is wonderful!). however, there's no need to force yourself to be "a reader". pick up a book every now and then and keep reading if you enjoy it, but not reading regularly doesn't make you any less of a good person. i find the pressure to become "a person who reads" or to rediscover my inner bookworm only distances me from the very act of reading.

MOST BASS ARE JUST FISH BUT LEROY BROWN WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL

Leroy Brown has been haunting me, so I looked into his backstory and it's wilder than you could possibly imagine.

Leroy Brown was about one pound when he was caught in 1973 in Lake Eufala, Alabama, by Tom Mann, who is absolutely legendary in the world of bass fishing. Instead of releasing or taking him home to eat, Mann decided he recognized a spark of something special in the fish, so he took him home and popped him in his backyard pond. Later, he moved the fish to a giant aquarium in his workshop. He was an aggressive fish, so he got named after the song. And Mann loved this fish. He trained him to jump through a hoop, he hand-fed him, he would talk about him to anybody. The fish became internationally known, with publicity in Russia, South Africa, Australia, and other countries.

Then, in 1980, the fish dies- probably of old age. So what to do? Have a funeral. Various sources say between 500 and 1,200 people came (there was a very large bass fishing tournament that weekend), and the local marching band was there to play "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" as the fish's tiny casket was lowered into his grave.

But then things got really wild. On the day of the funeral, it was eventually decided that the ground was too wet and muddy, so Mann put the fish and his casket (actually a satin-lined tackle box full of one dead fish and the lure he was caught with) in the freezer.

That night, somebody stole the dead fish and his tiny casket.

Seriously. This was not a taxidermy fish, this was just. Y'know. A dead fish, with all of the smells that entails.

Three weeks later, the tackle box turns up at the Tulsa, Oklahoma airport. A baggage handler found it, and it was decided that the box full of three-week-old decaying Leroy was too nasty to ship back to Alabama. The statue remained at Fish World, which is where the public could visit Leroy during his life, until 2005, when Tom Mann died and the facility was closed. (Fish World was like... a weird museum/facility to learn about bass fishing. Mann wasn't just an expert angler, he also designed some of the most popular lures that are still used in bass fishing, as well as the Humminbird depth finder- still the most popular depth finder brand on the market. So he had this workshop/lure lab there and people could come see his stuff but also learn about how to go bass fishing and how to do bass fishing as a sport.) The statue went to another bass fisherman, until the city of Eufala asked for it back in 2016. Now it sits prominently on Main Street, reminding everyone that most bass are just fish, but Leroy Brown was something special.

LEROY BROWN UPDATE

I found a picture from his funeral!

From left to right: Tom Mann, Leroy Brown (deceased), Ray Scott

Ray Scott was the president of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, and was the person who had the Leroy statue from 2005-2016.

I am still trying to track down images of Leroy when he was alive. There should be some, as the fish had editorials in Southern Living and a couple of other magazines, but those may take longer to find. For now, enjoy this image of Leroy laid to rest, covered by the only artificial lure he ever struck: Mann's coveted strawberry worms.

Tom Mann's memoir, Think Like A Fish, is up on the Internet Archive. While it doesn't have any photos (or at least, the edition that's online doesn't), Chapter 11, which is about Leroy, implies that there may be video evidence of this fish!

I really hope I can find some old commercials. Leroy was the only small fish in the entire tank, so if these commercials still exist, and if there's a small largemouth bass in them, we'll have moving images of this fish!

FOUND HIM

I couldn't find any of the old TV spots, but I did find this ad for Mann's Jelly Worm, featuring the legend himself!

There he is! In the four pictures to the left, that's Leroy Brown! Look at him, being extremely suspicious of that bait! Mann notes in his memoir that while Leroy Brown would hit plastic bait, he'd never take it- in other words, he'd bite, but if it had a hook, he wouldn't swallow. Instead, he'd swim with it:

I am officially declaring this investigation into the life and times of Leroy Brown complete. We've seen his memorial, we've learned about his life, we've marveled at his post-mortem kidnapping, and now we've seen pictures of him both dead and alive. The only thing I have left to show is this: the merch.

Oh yeah, there was merch. Specifically, the Leroy Brown crankbait and the Leroy Brown belt buckle:

If you want to see more about the lure, including watching a guy fish with it, there's a youtube video from a fella who does a lot of fishing with vintage/retro lures.

I feel enriched for having learned so much about bad, bad Leroy Brown.

...This is what true fame looks like. :)

Lemony Snicket's Advice on Writing a Nice Thank-You Note

I am mad about cellphone cameras hiding the processing they do, and I am glad about software that lets me control it and opt in and out, and I dictated this rant on insta so I am resharing the images here and will attempt to turn this into a useful text post on my blog in future, when my hand is working better 🤘👍

Here's the website for the app I'm getting so much good use out of: https://opencamera.org.uk/

And here's a big dump of photos from it!

and here's an example of exactly how much this means to me -- I've been really feeling like I'm terrible at photographing my own work, especially watercolour, and i can't seem to really capture what makes a painting special in person.

here's some examples of my attempts to photograph this sketchbook painting using the native camera app on my phone:

it's grainy, blotchy, the colours feel off, the contrast is too much... it really doesn't capture what's on paper in front of me!

so then i try with the processing turned off in Open Camera:

it's fucking night and day!

A clearer comparison for you:

jesus fucking christ what a game changer!

cc: @petermorwood (per previous discussions)