My peak-Tumblr era was 2007–2010. When most people think back to their good old days on Tumblr, the time period they’re thinking of is mostly or entirely after that.
Whatever Tumblr is or was, to most people, happened long after I left.
The people I followed back then are mostly gone now, and the people I’ve followed since then (mostly on Twitter) aren’t here. I don’t know who my community is here, or even if I’ll find one.
I no longer know what works here and what doesn’t. I don’t get any of the jokes or references. I feel like the oldest person in the room.
This doesn’t really feel like going “back” to an old hangout — it feels like starting over.
And I don’t know if it’ll stick or not. It depends on where I find my people. If “we” congregate here, or I find a new community here, that’ll be great — and if not, I’ll probably go wherever they end up.
“If you qualify and would like to be an astronaut, now is the time. This is your NASA.”
In 1977, NASA was looking for new recruits to join the Astronaut Corps and fly the up-and-coming Space Shuttle. In this new era, NASA also sought to diversify its ranks and improve the space agency’s culture. In its first twenty years, NASA’s Astronaut Corps was almost exclusively white and entirely male. As Kim McQuaid writes in his excellent essay, “‘Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures’:
Civil Rights at Nasa in the
Nixon Era and Beyond,” (which is available online) NASA hired fewer racial minorities and women than any other federal institution, and their equal opportunity program was “a near total failure.”
Under pressure from both external forces and within (including Ruth Bates Harris, the first Black woman to hold a senior role in NASA management), NASA made a more concerted effort to recruit women and racial minorities for their next group of astronauts. Part of their outreach including hiring Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek. In addition to meeting with community organizations and college students, she created advertisements like this one, in which she and Apollo astronaut (and fourth man to walk on the Moon) Alan Bean discuss and demonstrate the future of space exploration.
NASA Astronaut Group 8 (nicknamed TFNG), announced in January 1978, was the largest class of astronaut candidates yet: thirty-five Americans, including the first six women, three Black men (the first since 1967, when Bob Lawrence was selected but died in a plane crash several months later), and the first Asian American.
Col. Frederick Gregory, an Air Force test pilot who was part of TFNG and later the first Black commander of a shuttle mission, spoke about the impact of Nichols’ ad spot: “[NASA] had a very positive and strong campaign to encourage women and minorities. And I saw her on the TV one day, and she pointed directly at me and she said, ‘I want you in the astronaut program.’ And she was talking to me.”
Nichols has also reflected on the results of her work with NASA:
When NASA asked me to help them find the first qualified women and minorities to join the then all-male-all-white astronaut corp[s], I did so with great enthusiasm. One of the first that my company was able to reach was a beautiful, young, brilliant woman named Sally Ride. She not only joined the astronaut corps – she revolutionized it by blazing the trail that so many female astronauts followed. She became MY inspiration to continue to search to find the next Sally Ride, or Dr. Mae Jemison… [Ride] once thanked me for my recruitment efforts while under contract to NASA, saying “If it hadn’t been for you I might not be here.”
RIP Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022), may her memory be a blessing.
Only in 20th century America would someone see a cool giant sequoia tree with a split trunk and then think “let’s ram a fucking road through the middle”
Ever wanted to look back in time? This week, we’re launching a kind of time machine – a telescope so powerful it will help us see back some of the first stars and galaxies made after the Big Bang.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most advanced telescope we’ve ever put in space. With revolutionary technology, it will study 13.5 billion years of cosmic history and help humanity understand our place in the stars.
Tomorrow, Dec. 25, at 7:20 a.m. ET (12:20 UTC), the Webb Telescope is set to launch from French Guiana, beginning a 29-day journey to a spot a million miles away.
Once Webb launches, the journey has only just begun. The telescope will begin a 2-week-long process of unfolding itself in space before settling in to explore the universe in ways we’ve never seen before.
