Remember That Short Story They Made You Read In School Called The Lottery Where The Whole Town Gets Together

Ravenclaw: Since I'm going to be gone for awhile, I've left a complimentary bowl of advice.

Ravenclaw: [picks one paper out of the bowl] For instance, "Gryffindor, stop doing that" just applies to everything.

someone: it’s inevitable snape turned out to be a horrible person, when you consider his childhood…

sirius: *abused and raised by blood supremacists, is disowned, is framed for murder*

sirius: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

neville: *grew up with a controlling grandmother who always told him he wasn’t good enough, lived with the knowledge that his parents were tortured to insanity, bullied and looked down on by just about everyone*

neville: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

ginny: *is literally possessed by voldemort for the better part of a year*

ginny: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

remus: *had no friends until he was 11, lives in constant fear of being outed as a werewolf, forced to become a monster every month*

remus: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

luna: *watched her mother die, picked on by everyone except ginny, treated as a freak, has only one friend until she’s 14*

luna: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

hagrid: *expelled at age 13 for something he didn’t do, accused of murder twice, outcasted for being half-giant*

hagrid: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

cho: *has her first love be murdered by a genocidal dictator and about half the world refuses to believe it, must struggle with her feelings towards harry and her guilt about them*

cho: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

mcgonagall: *fell in love with a muggle but had to break off their engagement, for fear of turning out like her own mother, later married a wizard who she loved but he died 3 years later*

mcgonagall: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

harry: *is degraded and abused his entire childhood, forced to sleep in a cupboard for 11 years, constantly treated as being an unwelcome outsider, told he should be grateful for his abusers taking him in, lied to constantly for the first 11 years of his life about who he is and who his parents were, consistently blamed for things that he couldn’t control, picked on at school and continuously beaten up by his cousin’s gang, sees multiple people die*

harry: *still manages to not be a horrible person*

Wonderful meteor shooting advice from nasa.

10 Things: How to Photograph a Meteor Shower

Taking photographs of a meteor shower can be an exercise in patience as meteors streak across the sky quickly and unannounced, but with these tips – and some good fortune – you might be rewarded with a great photo.

These tips are meant for a DSLR or mirrorless camera, but some point-and-shoot cameras with manual controls could be used as well.

1. The Photo Op: Perseids Meteors

The Perseids are dusty remnants of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

Earth passes through the comet’s invisible, multi-billion mile trail of tiny debris each year around August, creating a meteor shower of so-called “shooting stars” as the particles are vaporized in our atmosphere.

Perseid meteors already are streaking across the sky. This year’s shower peaks on a moonless summer night -from 4 pm on the 12th until 4 am on the 13th Eastern Daylight Time.

Read more on the Perseids ›

2. Get away from city lights and find a place with dark skies.

In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky in Spruce Knob, West Virginia, during the 2016 Perseids meteor shower. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Too much light and it will be hard for your eyes to see fainter meteors, plus your image will get flooded with the glow of light. Turning down the brightness of the camera’s LCD screen will help keep your eyes adjusted to the dark. The peak of the 2018 Perseid meteor shower occurs just after the new moon, meaning a thin crescent will set long before the best viewing hours, leaving hopeful sky watchers with a moonlight-free sky!

3. Use a tripod.

In this ten-second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky above Washington, DC during the 2015 Perseids meteor shower, Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Meteor photography requires long exposures, and even the steadiest of hands can’t hold a camera still enough for a clear shot. Heavier tripods help reduce shaking caused by wind and footsteps, but even a lightweight tripod will do. You can always place sandbags against the feet of the tripod to add weight and stability. If you don’t have a tripod, you might be able to prop your camera on or up against something around you, but be sure to secure your camera.

4. Use a wide-angle lens.

In this 30 second exposure taken with a circular fish-eye lens, a meteor streaks across the sky during the 2016 Perseids meteor shower as a photographer wipes moisture from the camera lens Friday, August 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

A wide-angle lens will capture more of the sky and give you a greater chance of capturing a meteor in your shot, while a zoom lens captures a smaller area of the sky. The odds of a meteor streaking past that small patch are lower.

5. Use a shutter release cable or the camera’s built-in timer.

Long exposures are not just for meteors. In this shot taken at Joshua Tree National Park, a hiker’s headlamp leaves a trail of light along a twilight path. Credit: National Park Service / Hannah Schwalbe

A tripod does a great job of reducing most of the shaking your camera experiences, but even the act of pressing the shutter button can blur your extended exposure. Using the self-timer gives you several seconds for any shaking from pressing the shutter button to stop before the shutter is released. A shutter release cable (without a self-timer) eliminates the need to touch the camera at all. And if your camera has wifi capabilities, you might be able to activate the shutter from a mobile device.

6. Manually focus your lens.

In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseids meteor shower Friday, August 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

At night, autofocus will struggle to find something on which to focus. Setting your focus to infinity will get you close, but chances are you’ll have to take some test images and do some fine tuning. With your camera on a tripod, take a test image lasting a few seconds, then use the camera’s screen to review the image. Zoom in to a star to see how sharp your focus is. If the stars look like fuzzy blobs, make tiny adjustments to the focus and take another test image.

Repeat until you are happy with the result.

If your camera has a zoomable electronic viewfinder or live view option, you might be able to zoom to a star and focus without having to take a test image.

7. Aim your camera.

The Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, visible in the northern sky soon after sunset this time of year.

Even though we don’t know when or where a single meteor will appear, we do know the general area from which they’ll originate.

Meteor showers get their name based on the point in the sky from which they appear to radiate. In the case of the Perseids, during their peak, they appear to come from the direction of the constellation Perseus in the northern sky.

8. Calculate your exposure time.

In this 20-second exposure, a meteor lights up the sky over the top of a mountain ridge near Park City, Utah. Even though this image was captured during the annual Perseid meteor shower, this “shooting star” is probably not one of the Perseid meteors, which originate from material left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. Instead, it’s likely one of the many bits of rock and dust that randomly fall into the atmosphere on any given night. Credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

As Earth rotates, the stars in the sky appear to move, and if your shutter is open long enough, you might capture some of that movement. If you want to avoid apparent star movement, you can follow the 500 Rule. Take 500 and divide it by the length in millimeters of your lens. The resulting number is the length of time in seconds that you can keep your shutter open before seeing star trails. For example, if you’re using a 20 mm lens, 25 seconds (500 divided by 20) is the longest you can set your exposure time before star trails start to show up in your images.

9. Experiment!

In this 30 second exposure photo, hikers find their way to the top of Spruce Knob in West Virginia to view the annual Perseids meteor shower, Friday, August 12, 2016. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Once you know the maximum exposure time, you can set your shutter priority to that length and let the camera calculate other settings for your first image. Depending on how the image turns out, you can manually adjust aperture (set it to a lower number if the image is too dark) and ISO (set it to a higher number if the image is too dark) to improve your next images. Changing only one setting at a time will give you a better understanding of how those changes affect your image.

10. Enjoy the show.

The crew of the International Space Station captured this Perseid meteor falling to Earth over China in 2011. Credit: NASA

With your camera settings adjusted, capturing that perfect photo is just a matter of time and luck. The highest rate of meteors visible per hour is in the hours after midnight and before dawn. Set up your camera next to a lounge chair or a blanket to witness the wonder of a meteor shower for yourself – and, with any luck, you’ll take home some envy-inducing shots, too!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity

Love

(Sound is very much required on this one.)

Sometimes food is so darn tasty you gotta sing its praises.

AWOOOOO! 

ʷᵒᵒ

I had a dream that obama was smoking a cig then turned to me and said “I pity the fool that lives like you”

I love runoff voting because it combats many of the problems that lead to a less responsive two party system that doesn't meet the needs of the people it is meant to serve. I think this would be a step in the correct direction if we were willing to implement it and work towards higher voter turnout and fair boundaries for voter districts.

Something fascinating is happening in Maine.

This year, Republican Bruce Poliquin sought reelection, having served in the House of Representatives for two terms.  He ran against the Democrats’ candidate, Jared Golden. 

Poliquin got 46.2% of the votes.  Golden got 45.7% of the votes.

So Poliquin got more votes… right?

What if I told you that Golden is expected to be the new Representative?

You’ll notice that 46.2% + 45.7% = 91.9%, not 100%.  

See, Poliquin and Golden weren’t the only candidates, there were also Independent candidates like like Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar.   

Normally in America, if you vote for someone that’s “kinda like a Democrat, but not a Democrat” you run the risk of having a Republican win (and if you vote for someone “kinda like a Republican” it can be seen as helping the Democrats).

For example, over in Arizona it looks like the Democratic candidate for the Senate might have won… except some people voted for a liberal “Green Party” candidate.  More than twice as many people than were needed for the Democrat to win.  So the Republican candidate goes to the Senate.

The election was won by the candidate that less voters liked.

Back to Maine.

In 2016, Maine became the first state in America to vote in favor of having their federal elections be decided by ranked choice/instant runoff voting.  

Under this type of voting, people fill out a ballot to say which candidate they like the most… and which candidate would be their second choice, their third choice, and so on.

If no candidate gets a majority of the votes, then officials look at the ballots again and say “okay which candidates got the fewest votes? Who did their supporters say was their second choice?”

The votes for the candidates that got nowhere near a majority are given to whichever candidate was the “Second choice” of those voters.  The goal is to ensure that the winning candidate is someone that a majority of the population is at least okay with.

And that’s why Poliquin, with his 46.2% is expected to lose to Golden and his 45.7%.  Because the people that ended up voting for an Independent mostly said “well, Golden wouldn’t be my favorite… but he’s better than Poliquin!”

The end result still isn’t perfect, but it’s a vastly more democratic process, that has the potential to elect officials far more representative of the population. 

People can vote for an Independent freely instead of holding their nose and voting for the “lesser evil.”  Independent parties can have a chance to grow instead of being demonized as taking away votes. 

And candidates can look at the results and say “huh, a lot of the people that got me elected really liked that Independent.  Maybe I should see what were the policies that made the Independent popular?

Americans need to look to Maine and ask “why aren’t we doing it like that?” (and maybe head over to https://www.fairvote.org/ to try and get the ball rolling in their State)

This is the dream show. Congrats Jeff and Bless Nat Geo for making this happen

I am psyched

Cannot wait