ftl ✅ @ftl@awoo.space

she grinded so hard she went back in time and became Mitochondrial Eve

yes

Tonight's evil scheme:

Send an improperly cleaned probe to either Enceladus or Europa and contaminate them with bacteria. Then, long after humans have destroyed themselves and sapient life develops on whichever moon is chosen, that life will puzzle over the origins of life, and it turns out the weird conspiracy theorists who claim it was put there in an alien plot will actually be right.

This year, as every year, I strongly recommend K Tempest Bradford's "Until Forgiveness Comes," a story about personal grief vs public spectacle, and whether it's healthy to "never forget" an act of violence:

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/until-forgiveness-comes/

crabohydrates

Interactive map predicting when fall foliage will peak in your area in the US: https://smokymountains.com/fall-foliage-map/

Bringing over from birdsite because it is wholesome and lime-like

How did "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" become the typical sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet and not "sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow" which is objectively a million times cooler

I should have named my dog Starfox, so that:

-when she is getting too excited and bitey, I can say "Playtime's over, Starfox."

-when she is chewing on something valuable, I can say, "Can't let you do that, Starfox!"

-when she shows up to stop me from taking over the solar system, I can say, "I've been waiting for you, Starfox. Only *I* have the brains to rule Lylat!"

Engineering

Interesting article on John W. Campbell and how his contributions to midcentury SF were actually regressive as hell and held the genre back for decades: https://alis.me/x/everything-wrong-with-science-fiction-is-john-w-campbells-fault/

Nagas are just snake-taurs

Starfleet UX designers learned that if they didn't make some bridge consoles explode, captains would ignore damage until the shields failed.