Waldelfe

For those among us who are menstruating: drip. is a very neat little period tracking app that offers basic tracking functions and fertility planning. All data is only stored locally.

It is open source and was developed in Germany. It's available on Android and iOS.

More information in https://dripapp.org/

You know those euphemistic words like "muck up" for "fuck up", "shite" for "shit", or "unalive" for "suicide" that people use to circumvent the rules of major platforms like YouTube and Tiktok? I just thought about how people are starting to use them on other platforms and in real live out of habit. But they only make sense in this very specific context, that a majority of communication takes place on privately owned, strictly regulated internet platforms that ban certain words.

If for whatever reason the details of how the platforms worked get lost (and they might, because it's so centralised that all it takes is for a handful of major companies to go under and take all the content they host with them), it'll be difficult to retroactively figure out what the culture of the 2020s looked like and where all those weird words suddenly came from.

Mascha Kaléko was born in 1907 as the daughter of a Russian father and an Austrian mother. The family fled from the persecution of Jews in Galicia to Germany in 1918. Mascha spend her teenage years in Berlin. In 1928 she marries the philologist Saul Kaléko. In 1934 she meets and falls in love with the Jewish composer Chemjo Vinaver and starts a four year long affair until her divorce from Saul in 1938.

Chemjo and Mascha flee to New York where she continues to write poetry in German, her mother language. By the time she wrote this poem she already lived in New York, where she suffered from loneliness and the fact that she could not get her German poetry published.

Ein Mensch wird "Pessimist" geschmäht,

Der düster in die Zukunft späht.

Doch scheint dies Urteil wohl zu hart:

Die Zukunft ist's, die düster starrt!

A man as "Pessimist" is flouted

Who sees the future gloom'ly clouded.

However this judgement too harsh appears:

It is the future that bleakly stares.

(I tried to translate it in a way that makes it rhyme in English. )

So I am currently rewatching Stargate SG1 and thinking about certain things that always rub me the wrong way when watching or reading SciFi. Now, I know that Stargate in particular doesn't really take itself too seriously and shouldn't be scrutinized too much. It's also a bit older. But there are still some things that even modern SciFi-Worlds featuring outer space and aliens have or lack, that always slightly rub me the wrong way. I would love to hear your opinion.

1. Lack of any form of camera surveillance technology

I mean, come on, the Goa'uld couldn't figure out a way to install their equivalent of cameras all over their battle ships in order to monitor it? They have forms of video/picture transmitting technology. Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance. (I'm not up to date with the newest series.) Yes, I get that having a crew member physically go to a cargo bay and check out the situation is better for dramatic purposes. But it always rubs me the wrong way that they have to do that. I would just love to see a SciFi-Series set in space where all space ships are equipped with proper camera technology. Not just some vague "sensor" that tells the crew "something is wrong, but you will still have to physically go there and see it for yourself". I want the captain of a space ship to have access to the 200,000 cameras strategically placed all over the ship to monitor it.

2. Languages

I have studied linguistics, learned several foreign languages and lived in a foreign country for a while, so my perspective is influenced by that. I always find it weird when everybody "just talks English". Yes, I get that it's easier to write stories in which all characters can just freely interact with each other. But it's always so weird to me when an explorer comes to a foreign planet and everybody just talks their language. At least make up an explanation for it! "We found this translator device in the space ship that crashed on earth". There you go. I love the Stargate Movie where Daniel Jackson figures out how to communicate with the people on Abydos. During the series most worlds will just speak English, with some random words in other languages thrown in. As someone interested in linguistics I love Stargate for how much it features deciphering languages, though I still find it weird when they go to another world and everybody just speaks English.

3. Humanoid aliens

Especially with modern CGI I would just love to shows get more creative when it comes to alien races. We don't need a person in a costume anymore. Every once in a while you will have that weird alien pop up, but all in all I feel like there's still a lot of potential. Also changes in Human physiology due to different environmental conditions on foreign planets.

That being said, I would also like to mention some SciFi-titles that in my mind stand out for being very creative in this regard:

• The writing of Julie Czerneda is very creative when it comes to alien species. She was a biologist and uses her knowledge to create a wide variety of alien life forms
• The forever war (Without spoiling the end, so I'll leave it at that. Just liked it as a creative take on an alien race so different it's incomprehensible to us)
• I very much appreciate Douglas Adams for the babel fish.
• I also liked The expanse for including the development of a Belter language and changes in human physiology due to different gravity.

What do you think? Do you know any good examples of SciFi-Worldbuilding, that solve some common inconsistencies?

(Edited because it looked weird :P) Also, I rembered one more thing: I have two serious food allergies and I always cringe when I see characters take some random food from an alien civilisation and eat. It's especially bad right now while rewatching Stargate. SG1 just keeps happily eating and drinking anything that is offered and there are so many scenes of them eating without asking much. Maybe it's just because I can't even do that in my own society and am so used to always asking "What is in it? Can I eat it?" Although some shows have good solutions like standard nutrient packs in a military context or food replicators that create any food you want.