A moon, an aquarium, a writer
Jun. 17th, 2019 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garote
Three things I learned about today!1.
There is a moon of the planet Uranus named Miranda, whose icy surface is so incredibly jagged and mixed up that there is a cliff on the surface that is 20 km tall, and if you jumped off the top of it you would fall for 12 minutes before landing due to the low gravity. Twelve minutes, watching the side of an icy cliff scroll past you. That's enough time to yodel a couple of Abba songs, start to finish*.
Of course, even low gravity can accelerate a falling body to quite a high speed given enough time, so when you hit bottom you'll be going about 200km an hour. (124 miles per hour.) Even if you were landing in an ocean or a giant cube of jello you wouldn't survive the impact, because Miranda's surface temperature is about -210 degrees Celsius (-350 degrees Fahrenheit) and those things would be frozen as solid as a marble floor.
I'd say "don't try this as home, kids," but the planet Uranus is 1,784,000,000,000 miles from anyone's house, so it's not going to be a problem.
( * This would be a great pun, except Abba are Swedish, not Finnish )
2.
The glymphatic system: You may not be aware of it, but once you are, it will become your favorite reason to sleep.
It's a kind of drainage network inside your brain. During wakefulness the fluid inside your brain slowly gets fouled like the water inside a fish tank. During sleep, this system goes to work, and your brain swells slightly, using the pressure to drive the fluid around the system and clean it up. Yes: If you don't sleep, your brain drowns in its own waste!
Sometimes when you're waking up, you can hear the tail end of this process. Little creaky squishing sounds not unlike the stretching of a tiny spring, only a fraction of a second long, that appear to be coming from inside your own neck just below your ears, where sounds really shouldn't be coming from. You can feel it as you're hearing it. That's the extra fluid leaking back into your spinal column as the pressure returns to balance.
3.
These awesome quotes by Sir Terry Pratchett, about writing:
“There’s no research like the research you’re doing when you think you’re enjoying yourself.”
“The best time to work out a book is in bed just after you’ve woken up. I think my brain is on timeshare to a better author overnight. A notebook is vital at this point.”
“If you think you have a book evolving, now is the time to write the flap copy.”
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 05:31 pm (UTC)basically, the brain wash
The best books
Date: 2019-07-04 06:00 am (UTC)I've enjoyed reading your blog, Petrea pointed me in this direction. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm super excited to hear how your journey with Nicky goes. What an epically wonderful adventure with such a cool and kind young man. I hope to read about it as you travel.
Amber
Re: The best books
Date: 2019-07-25 12:03 pm (UTC)However I haven't drawn anything in it yet, after almost two weeks. There always seems to be something higher on the list. Usually writing or pedaling the bike. :D
Nick is a fantastic kid, yes... Too bad there wasn't enough time to get him ready for Iceland... But perhaps that's for the best, because now that I'm here I'm realizing that it's not a "beginner level" sort of country to ride through. Socially it's easy (low language barrier, no crime, services readily available) but technically it's quite challenging (hills, high winds, quickly changing weather). Denmark will be a much better place to meet him.
Re: The best books
Date: 2019-07-26 04:29 am (UTC)