Avatar and Manta’s Gift

This is kind of funny. When I watched the movie Avatar way back in 2009, I was struck by the similarity of the premise to Timothy Zahn’s 2002 novel Manta’s Gift:

The main character, a human who’s suffered a severely disabling injury, is offered the chance to place his consciousness into an alien body and report back to the human expedition. Over the course of his time there, he finds that he has more in common with the aliens than with the humans who sent him, and pushes back against their exploitative agenda.

OK, so it’s a brain transplant, not a neural link, and it’s manta-like beings who live in the groundless atmosphere of Jupiter, not humanoids who are part of a literal Gaia.

I just discovered that the book was re-issued in 2020 (Timothy Zahn, 2002) with a tagline describing it as “A gripping first-contact adventure for fans of James Cameron’s Avatar…”

#avatar #books #importedPost #movies #timothyZahn

Fragments of a sun halo and a couple of contrails

Looks like the usual 22-degree circular halo.

#contrail #halo #importedPost

Marketing

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2025/08/marketing/

Overloaded

Someone was trying to move boulders on wooden pallets for landscaping, and they seem to have been a bit much for the pallets to handle…

#boulder #importedPost #oops

Bird, Bird, Bird

They were everywhere. But at least most of them were out of the way.

#ImportedPost #scooters #sidewalk

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2018/08/bird-bird-bird/

Meloetta is Ready for Rehearsal

All set!

#importedPost #pokemon #seeAlsoGts #seeAlsoPixelfed

That’s Not Your Conscience

If your conscience is telling you to refuse someone medical care because you think they’re icky, maybe it’s not your conscience that you’re listening to.

#ethics #ImportedPost #Tweets

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2018/01/not-your-conscience/

Curves of Morro Bay

Morro Bay lies along the central California Coast near San Luis Obispo, and is known for two major landmarks: Morro Rock, a large volcanic dome right near the shoreline, and a power plant with three very tall smokestacks.

Some miles north, Highway 46 cuts through the coastal mountains from Cambria to Paso Robles, revealing cattle ranches, wineries, and empty hills. There’s one spot along the road where the hills part, revealing a perfect view of the bay and the rock. Better yet, there’s a turnout, making it easy to stop and look.

The first time I drove this way, it was gray and overcast, and might actually have been raining. A year later I took the same drive again on an sunny day, unable to remember how far along the turnout was but watching for it the whole way. The result: this shot.

The curves of the dome, the bay, the rolling hills and the patch of heavier vegetation all fit in with this week’s theme.

Photo Challenge (WordPress): Curves

#CACoastTrip2009 #California #coastline #curves #FromParallelLines #ImportedPost #PhotoChallenge

Lamppost Forest

Urban Light at LACMA is a large square filled with over 200 lamp posts that the artist collected from various locations over several years, spaced wide enough to walk through comfortably. It’s like being in a forest of lamp posts — perfect for this week’s challenge.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t even planning on going there. We went to see the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum at the other end of the park. Oil has been seeping out of the ground for thousands of years, trapping animals and preserving their bones in an incredible collection of ice age fossils. But the parking lot on that side of the park was full, so we parked in the LACMA structure at the other end.

Photo challenge (WordPress): Light

Update: I also took a photo with my phone for Instagram. It’s not as good quality of course, but I like the way it came out.

#FromParallelLines #ImportedPost #LACMA #light #night #PhotoChallenge #SeeAlsoInstagram

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2013/12/lamppost-forest/

Coronawhere?

A lot of the maps I see showing coronavirus cases, even from sources like the CDC, have a problem: They’re labeled by country, or by state. It’s too big to be useful.

• Labeling the number of cases reported in the US doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in clusters in Washington and California.
• Labeling the number of cases in California doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in northern California.

What matters for tracking its spread is actual location and transportation links, not jurisdiction.

Note: Cleaned up a bit from my original post on Mastodon.

Update 2024: It’s weird to look back at this now that the virus is literally everywhere (except maybe still Antarctica and the International Space Station?) and will be with us forever. That there was a time when it was still on the horizon but hadn’t arrived here (for whatever your value of “here” might have been) yet.

#coronavirus #Covid19 #ImportedPost #maps

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2020/03/coronawhere/