Steven Hoefer🖋 @readsteven@mastodon.xyz

A thread of optimistic science/fiction art.

First up, Bryan Larsen's joyful inspiration: https://www.bryanlarsen.com/gallery/

A Twitter thread collected into a Medium post, cannot, my its very existence, hold anything edifying.

(Ah, need to check the dates on these image uploads from @insight_images. These images from the surface of Mars were from -last week-. Please resume being amazed by the things we do on other planets.)

Does NASA InSight team have no one on staff with backhoe experience? Because this digging operation has been going on for months and is excruciating to watch.

Found some good light and this piglet trying really hard.

Keep trying, my piglets.

Other counter-reviews that have driven me toward a place:

"No TV's, couldn't watch the game."

"What kind of Japanese restaurant doesn't have California rolls?"

This one star Yelp review is all about how they wouldn't hard poach their egg.

All I can think is, "I have to go there. They know how to poach an egg."

I have a bash script on my Mac that pops up a warning if I'm working on the wrong git branch. I've set it to run every few minutes. It saves me headaches. It's a quick hack, but here's the essence:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/app
OUTPUT=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD | cut -d/ -f3-)
if [ "$OUTPUT" != "dev" ]; then
osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to display alert "Wrong Git Branch" message "You are not working the the /app/dev branch!"'
exit 1
fi
exit 0

There's an article going around complaining about all the "counterfeit" George Orwell books bought via Amazon.

Yes, Amazon is bad. I thought that was settled?

But also American copyright is garbage. Orwell died 69 years ago. His works should have been in the public domain decades ago. (And is in the public domain in countries where many of the "counterfeits" were printed.)

For me, it makes the premise of the article too tenuous to stand and is just invoking Orwell to get clicks.

This photo of a 1910 racing schooner makes me ache.

(Photo by Frank William Beken)

Hugo awards have been announced. If you need some more reading recommendations, it's a good place to look: http://www.thehugoawards.org/2019/08/2019-hugo-awards-announced/

Here's a 17 minute video about the Buran Russian space shuttle. Lots of stuff I've never seen before. (In Russian. Autotranslated captions are useful for everyone else.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhU4DwzzEKs

What's the 'natural' life span of a hatted Frosty? Are they immortal or do they pass as the season passes?

Is the hat itself alive and just puppets whatever it finds itself on, like that fungus that takes over ant brains? Am I responsible for what I do when wearing the hat?

If Frosty's had was placed on the remains of an arctic ice sheet, would it come alive and wreck some climate vengeance?

I have a lot of ethical questions about Frosty's magic hat.

Is taking it off of someone committing murder?

Why didn't anyone try to figure out where it came from? There's probably a hatless corpse face down in the snow that it was animating before the wind gust.