question everything.

https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx

But TBH I prefer the MIT Open Coursewear approach. Feel like taking a class on the policy and economics of nuclear engineering? MIT’s got you covered:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/#cat=engineering&subcat=nuclearengineering&spec=nuclearsystemspolicyandeconomics

In fact they’ve got  you covered with A LOT of their courses, everything from fine arts to immunology.

3.7.19 Thursday

This is Kjell Lindgren. He’s a NASA astronaut who just got back from 5 months on the International Space Station. There are two reasons why this picture is hilarious:

His wife is flawless and makes bad space puns to make him do household chores.

I have that shirt. Thousands of people have that shirt. That shirt is available at Target. Which means actual astronaut Kjell Lindgren, with his wardrobe already full of NASA-issued and logo-emblazoned clothes, was at Target, saw a NASA shirt, and was like, “Yes, I am buying this because this is what I want to spend my actual astronaut salary on.”

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here’s the poster NASA released for his mission to the ISS:

Everything started off all vanilla but a Expedition 16 they showed that they were truly Masters of The Dork Side of The Force:

Some other amusing posters they approved:

Okay, so, Labradorite.  Labradorite is complicated and sciencey, as all good rocks are.  I’ll see if I can explain it in a way that makes any sense!  (Once again, I’m not a scientist!  Correct me if I’m wrong!)

Most minerals, when they’re bright and pretty and colorful, look like that because while they were forming some impurities got mixed into them - usually metals like iron, copper, or titanium.  Without any impurities, these rocks would naturally be colorless.  We call these guys allochromatic (other-colored).

Other gemstones are certain colors because those elements are an important part of how they formed.  They’re not impurities that got mixed in, they’re actually part of the gemstone.  Their natural color IS the color you’re seeing.  We call them idiochromatic (inherently colored).

But labradorite doesn’t get its color from either of those things.  Labradorite is special.  It’s part of a third group: psudochromatic (false colored).  These rocks aren’t colorful at all, but they LOOK that way when light passes through them.

See, labradorite is actually just… grey.  From most angles, it looks like this:

You have to look at labradorite from a pretty specific angle to get those flashy colors, so when we cut it into cabochons for jewelry, or just polish up big pieces of it, we’re careful to do so at the most flattering angle, the angle that shows the most schiller, or “those cool glowy colors.”

Why just the one angle?  It’s all about labradorite’s crystal structure, and how it’s formed.

Labradorite is a rock that cooled down really slowly.  Because of that, it’s made of lots of very very thin layers of crystal, stacked on top of each other and all pretty much aligned in the same direction.  These are alternating layers of albite (mostly sodium), and orthoclase (mostly potassium), which solidify at very slightly different temperatures.  Labradorite is a rock that cooled in just the right way for a thin layer of albite to form, then a thin layer of orthoclase, then another thin layer of albite, and so on.

When light hits labradorite at the perfect angle to pass through a bunch of these layers, you get the schiller effect.  Basically, a little bit of the light gets bounced off the first layer and back to your eyes.  The rest of the light passes through to the second layer, and a little bit gets bounced back to your eyes again, and so on.  Every time more light gets sent back to you, it’s a little out of sync, and this makes it look like a different color.

(This is a very simplified way of explaining this.)

If these layers were all perfectly the same size, you’d get a uniform color, like the blue in moonstone.  But in labradorite, these layers might be different widths in different places, so different parts of the stone will reflect back wildly different colors!  We call this effect labradorescence to differentiate it from the uniform colored adularescence found in moonstone and some opals.

Depending on where it’s found in the world, labradorite can reflect all sorts of different colors!

Entire days sometimes roll by without us noticing. Sometimes we procrastinate through all day. Here are a few tips how to use your time better:

Track the use of your time -Try this for at least a week. Write down, in any way you want, how did you spent your day. When did you study? How long did you spend cleaning your room? When did you procrastinate? This will help you find the times of day when you procrastinate and which you could use better. 

Make schedules for especially busy days

Eliminate procrastination triggers -Put your phone away. Turn off your computer unless you truly need it for work.

Take breaks -I said it milion times and I’ll say it again.

Use every minute -20 minutes between classes? Do the small simple homework. 30 minute walk home? Listen to audio books.

Every task counts -Being productive isn’t only studying/working. It’s cleaning, self care and hobbies too. Keep that in mind.

Start on 3 -I use this method of counting to 3 when I really don’t want to do something. Just count to three and go. Get up and do it. Don’t give your brain a chance to stop you.

Enough sleep, enough energy

i hope you’re all listening, i’m pouring out my heart for paper. a part of me still believes that love is all i’m really after // everyone but you // the young veins

Reading a mystery novel + planning for the month of February. 

I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

Is OP aware that oh so many books exist on this subject?

And that almost universally the ones authored by people with doctorates in classicism and mythology disagree with OP?

Including the… epic hymn that first told this story? You know what’s in that original source material… right?

Abducted, yes. Demeter mourned? Definitely. Rape, no.

So here’s some info on Ancient Greek wedding traditions which (oh my stars and garters!!) included abducting the bride. With the father’s permission, which Hades got before he took her away.

Here’s a whole book on the subject of Ancient Greek wedding custom and its conflation with funeral rites. (Which sounds a bit like Hades and Persephone to anyone who’s ever dabbled in things like explication and context)

Here’s a link to another book that talks about Persephone’s rise to power as a result of her willingly eating the pomegranate seeds.

Oh shit!!

Here’s a whole bunch of myths and hymns that talk about her Queen of the Underworld badassery!!

Holy pug tacos Batman!!

Here’s another book about the myth focusing on the seasonal religious and liminal rites. WHICH TAKE PLACE IN THE DRY SUMMER (not the fucking winter), which you know if you read a book.Way to go, OP!

All these fucking books!  What could anyone possibly do with them all?!?!?!?! Do you eat books to absorb their powers instead of read them?

A better guess would be that you got into a moral panic over the name of a certain Renaissance statue and maybe after reading three pages of Edith Hamilton or the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article. And then used that to castigate and demean not only the people who actually take their limited time to create gorgeous art but also to denigrate modern day worshippers of Persephone and Hades?

And “rape” in the context of ancient greek/roman myths, usually means capture or snatching away, from a Latin verb with that meaning. The connotation was often snatching away women for the purpose of marriage, but it did NOT specifically refer to sexually violating a woman. The “Rape of Persephone” is the story of how Persephone was snatched away from her mother by Hades. The Rape of the Sabines is the story of how the Sabine women were snatched away from their families by the men of early Rome.

In the original myth of Persephone and Hades (the Homeric hymn, that is, which is the earliest source we have), there’s a lot of parallels drawn between marriage and death, specifically in that both steal a child away from the unwilling mother. (In ancient Greece, when a girl married, she moved to her husband’s house, and went from seeing her mother 24/7 to seeing her much less frequently, if at all, depending on how far away the husband lived and how strict he was). The story is actually about Demeter, not Persephone, in that it’s about how Demeter initially resisted her daughter’s death/marriage, to the point of defying Zeus and upsetting the natural world, but eventually accepted that this was the way it was going to be.

It’s nuanced, and we can’t just interpret it with a modern lens. There are pitfalls to calling it a horrific rape story, and also pitfalls to calling it an empowering feminist story. Neither are true, because both are interpreting the story as if it was composed by a modern person, for a modern audience, in a modern culture.

It is a story about how a mother must accept that her child will be taken from her without her consent, since to the Greeks, the only consent that legally mattered in a marriage was that of the bride’s father. (but the bride was usually consenting, too- think about it, if you’re trying to marry your daughter off, and persuading potential suitors that she’s a good match, it’s a hell of a lot easier to find a guy that she’s not actively resisting. Her consent might not matter legally, but fathers would strive to find a compatible match because it was easier if everyone involved was happy with the marriage). It is a story about a mother learning that it is right that she go along with this way of things, and that attempting to resist this cultural institution of marriage is akin to trying to resist death itself. It is a story that completely ignores whether or not Persephone wanted to marry Hades, was happy in the Underworld, or any of that. It’s a story about a mother learning the proper role of a mother in the Greek world. It’s a story amplifies and exaggerates the realities of a mother whose daughter gets married, in the way that the Iliad amplifies and exaggerates the realities of war and heroic pride. (It’s not just without Demeter’s consent, it’s a COMPLETE SURPRISE KIDNAPPING, Persephone’s not just married, she’s DEAD!! Demeter isn’t just sad, she’s so despondent she LITERALLY KILLS ALL PLANT LIFE). It’s a story that says, “Hey, mothers, your daughters will eventually leave you and get married, and you might be sad and miss her, but this is the way the world works, and this is what needs to happen for society to continue and the next generation to be born. Your pain and resentment is real, here is a powerful goddess feeling the same thing, but even more so. But she eventually accepted that her daughter had to grow up and move on, and so can you.”

It’s also the story of how a discontented woman can bring the world to screeching halt, and how the fundamentals of society (e.g. agriculture) cannot function without a woman’s willing work, and how those women must be kept happy in order to ensure that society functions. It is a story of how the Father of Gods and King of Men literally half-way undoes death itself just to satisfy a pissed-off mother, because an angry Demeter can bend even the Father of Gods to her will. It’s the story of a mother who fought death and marriage and half-way won. The story of Zeus submitting to Demeter’s will and going against his own word to Hades. It’s the story of women’s sacred role in facilitating the three fundamental transitions in every person’s life- birth, marriage, and death. It’s a story of how women understand and know death in a way men do not. It’s a story of how women have a power over death that men do not have, and that men are frightened of. It’s a story of how women held a central role in the continuation and propagation of society in Greek culture, and about what women’s participation in Greek society looked like.

Infographic I made for my feminism final!