Looking for a path

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

Curiosity celebrates her 14th Martian birthday this week and she’s still trucking along in Gale Crater where she’s sampling Martian soil to learn about the geology and climate and teach us all about the ancient lakes that used to cover our nearest neighbor!

Thank you to everyone who keeps this post queued up so I never forget her special day. I love how much love this post gets every year.

If you would like to see what Tumblr’s favourite Rover has been up to recently you can read about her latest mission updates here and you can see her live position in Gale Crater on this map here. (You can also see the great photos she takes!)

How not to break your neck

Aka Blum throws himself on the ground a bunch of times while talking

History time! (but mosylu it's not tagged as a historical - ) SHUSH

In 1935, as part of US President FDR's New Deal to try and haul the country out of the Great Depression, one of the departments of the Works Progress Administration was the unfortunately acronymed Federal Art Project. They hired artists to create works of public art, including posters, furniture, textiles, sculptures, murals, photographs, and all kinds of other art. In the finest tradition of the US Government, after the program ended in 1943, they forgot all about the art until the turn of the 21st century, at which point the pieces had been sold, shoved in storage, given away, discarded, and otherwise dispersed.

I was listening to a podcast that touched on art heists, and the host mentioned that, legally, WPA artwork could be neither bought nor sold, and that there were government employees that monitored eBay and various other sites to find people trying to sell WPA artwork.

Just like that, I had this fic.

Please excuse any inaccuracies; I'm sure there are many.

Hook, Line . . .

ArtBay.com listing 121616: WPA Wooden Sculpture New Mexico GORGEOUS Mexican Artist Natural Materials Great Depression Statuary Hand Carved Abstract Public Art Full Size 1930s Totally Restored No Damage RARE!!!

(Image: an abstract sculpture in gleaming wood, stretching almost to the ceiling in a sun-washed room

-

From: Cassian Andor <[email protected]>

To: [email protected]

Subject: ArtBay Listing 121616

Hello,

I'm emailing regarding the attached listing. Please be aware that by law, works created for the WPA can be neither bought nor sold. I am happy to work with you to assess the work and if it turns out to be an actual WPA piece, reclaim it or see it donated to a public institution.

Regards,

Agent Cassian Andor, Yavin City

Office of the Inspector General, Government Services Administration

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From: Liana Hallik <[email protected]>

To: Cassian Andor <[email protected]>

Listen fucko

It's mine I got it fair n square

I can sell it if I want to

What's WPA?

1. canonically female (no variation)

2. canonically the protagonist of her story (if it’s an ensemble cast you have to say you can legitimately see her as The main character)

3. your personal #1 favorite character in that story (ties are acceptable)

A less rendered one. Anyways, Fjord and Beauregard the best duo.

.

my annual end of summer sale is here! ☀️ everything is my shop has been marked down, up to 40% ✨ i’ve also re-opened a very limited number of preorder slots for salmon and crab earrings! once they’re sold out, they won’t be available again for at least a few months. more info below ❤️

I have a BMI of 35. I am the cutoff for most of medicine. My size or larger, we can't access:

Fertility treatment

Gender affirming surgeries

Most surgeries, in fact

bc we can't donate our bodies to science and drs don't study on larger bodies. Medications aren't made for us bc we're often excluded from scientific studies. We're systematically excluded and then blamed for poorer outcomes.

I don't care whether you 'like' looking at me or bodies like mine; we deserve equal access to healthcare [all caps].