Sci-fi short stories are so efficient; they take 15 minutes to read and then you think about them for the next 5 years
Hey guys, what if *puts the most horrifying mindblowing concept into your head with about 15 pages*
Acquired Stardust
i don't do bad sauce passes
noise dept.
Keni
Aqua Utopiaď˝ćľˇăŽĺşă§č¨ćśăç´Ąă
Mike Driver
almost home
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Not today Justin

romaâ
DEAR READER
Jules of Nature
todays bird

Show & Tell

cherry valley forever
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@calenith-official
Sci-fi short stories are so efficient; they take 15 minutes to read and then you think about them for the next 5 years
Hey guys, what if *puts the most horrifying mindblowing concept into your head with about 15 pages*

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james ortiz provided some of his own personal rocky backstory on the sag aftra podcast, transcribed by me because we all have to be miserable about it together.
link to the podcast, this section below is from timestamp 24.35
âandy weir provided a packet to the creature shop that was like a packet of eridian biology and stuff but there wasnât much about eridian culture or eridian sociology and i made a bunch of choices going in because i just needed to have like a âwho am i?â right?Â
[âŚ] and i made a decision that rockyâs species, that eridians are really social animals that in fact are like a beehive or a pod of dolphins - itâs a unique and really integrated ecosystem of everybody doing their [specific] part. and the fact that rocky had to fly that ship for about 45 years - longer than grace has been alive, i wanna point that out - heâs been alone on that ship, having to run that by himself and- ryan and i would talk about that, one day we sat down and he was like âso whatâs the movie from rockyâs perspective?â and i was like âoh itâs like âalienâ, [âŚ] like heâs in a âcontagionâ movie by himself and he has no idea whatâs going on.â
heâs basically in castaway by himself which of course ryan is too but like, one reason why we never cut to the past of rocky is like, i think it was really horrifying! i donât think rocky has slept in however many years and so a thing i was really struggling with is this idea of like ârocky must watch sleepâ because how do you make that a need as opposed to like, a cute idea? and i just had to make the decision that [âŚ] he has a lot of unprocessed trauma around the things that he doesnât understand and how much he is blaming himself because heâs the guy who fixes, heâs the guy who fixes and there was something really freeing about deciding that rocky was a deeply emotional, deeply anxious, deeply horrified person - being - that is trying to move through that in some way and how that affects the early scenes with him until thereâs a point in the story where you can see weâve physically softened rockyâs behaviour, because heâs finally feeling more safe and ok but all of that lore, all of that information [was essential].
i also decided, this is just a small nerdy thing, that there was actually some of his family, was on that ship too.â
Did a school visit today and asked a group of 8th graders if they could define the term "contemporary art" for me [for context, I work at a contemporary art museum], and one of them said "Is it art that's made with contempt?"
And unfortunately that's the funniest thing a student has ever said to me in 10 years of teaching
Much Ado About Nothing is literally so fucking awesome. The drama, the intensity, Beatrice saying she would eat Claudio's heart, when it's played well it just has such a powerful sincerity to it, the emotions and the drama dialed wayy up. And the verbal footwork, like a fencing with words, it's so good!
I watched it for the first time the other day, and it's like, ohh, I think I get it now, why people love Shakespeare. When it's done well, when the actors give it real energy and life and emotion, when it's not read monotone in an English class, it is fucking good. đ
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Like, I think I get it now. It's fucking good. No wonder people have been performing these plays for literally hundreds of years. They're good. They're fucking good.
@lizzibennet
when ur in high school u hear someone say like oh shakespeare has to be watched not read and ur like lol pretentious much.. and then you get to watch a good rendition of it and ur like. â¨i am having an extracorporeal experienceâ¨

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Let's ambush mama! đź
"Why do Pallas cats always look grumpy?"
"Pallas kittens."
The sheer roundness of this kitten must be admired.
Fascinating bits from the book, having read to the halfway point:
Grace isnât depressed primarily because heâs woken up weak and alone and stranded in space. That part engages his scientific curiosity as much as primal fear. Heâs much more overwhelmed by the astrophage situation, when it comes back to him; and heâs mourning his team. Every time he thinks of them, before he even remembers them properly, he starts to cry. His depression seems like loneliness at its coreâhe needs people to care for. Feels like that foreshadows how heâll feel about Rocky.
He also thinks warmly of his friend Marissa (old roommateâs ex, still meets him regularlyâhe can keep a friend!), and Steve (the Carl prototype), and Dmitri, the Russian scientist who makes an astrophage punâhe immediately invites him out for drinks. He enjoys people. He gets annoyed easily but moves on easily too. His internal monologue on the Mary, pre-Rocky, is just constantly returning to everything he loved about his dead crewmates and wishing they could have seen what heâs seeing. Itâs not even that he feels sorry for himself all aloneâitâs that he adored them for themselves.
Grace is given first look at the astrophage specifically because heâs a middle school teacher; heâs not functionally important in the scientific community, and they need someone brilliant but expendable. Stratt is afraid astrophage might kill whoever works on it (is it radioactive? infectious?), and if that happens she wants it to happen to a lone guy who wonât be too missed, so they can learn from his death how to protect the more important people who work on it later.
And they had no intention of letting him go on working on it! Since he doesnât become infected and the astrophage disproves his theory, they send him home. But then he has a panic attack teaching his class realizing that theyâre all going to deal with the apocalypse. He storms back into the facility demanding they give him astrophage to work with, because he has to do something. I love that, and it feels like it makes his horror at being ordered to go himself even more poignant. He understands the stakes. Heâd storm a high security facility for the stakes. He just doesnât want to die.
Heâs completely terrified of zero Gâhas a phobia of falling. He expects the fear and tries to psych himself up for it but as soon as the engines cut out he doesnât just scream, he flails and curls up into fetal position and vomits into his jumpsuit (because even while having a full breakdown he remembers the dangers of free floating liquids and aspiration). But in twenty minutes heâs figured out how to get around while floating and is starting to have fun. Everything that terrifies him also wakens his curiosity, and that saves him over and over.
His mind moves a million steps a minute. He thinks of every possible outcome and wants to test them all. Heâs deeply impatientâkeeps skipping important steps in his science to move faster. The unbalanced centrifuge in the movie actually makes sense when you know he did things like freehand the nanosyringe which should have been attached to a precision machine because he was annoyed and âfelt like getting stabby.â Heâs also not fully aware how exceptional his mind isârepeatedly excuses his encyclopediac knowledge of physics and complex near-instantaneous mental math with âscience teachers know things.â
Not only is he confused and embarrassed by other peopleâs sex lives, he doesnât notice at all when people are into him. Dr. Lokken (book-only character) is constantly arguing with him but gets flustered when he smiles at her or praises her ideas, tries hard to convince him of her theories, and looks to him for grounding when shocking things happen; he is simply baffled at this.
Grace theorizes that an ancestor of astrophage is the source of interstellar lifeâthat as it traveled between planets and stars to breed it shed cells onto planets capable of supporting water-based life, which evolved into humans, Eridians (yes, theyâre also water-based), and whatever else may be out there. Rocky says that only the two of them met because any other planet with life less advanced wouldnât be able to travel in space, and more advanced planets could solve the problem without leaving. Eridians and humans are both at the stage of development where they needed to go see Tau Ceti for themselves to learn the answer.
Grace is not just a yapper but a very good listener, when he doesnât have a theory to prove. Heâs gentle with Marissa on the day astrophage is identified, with Stratt when sheâs panicking about putting the crew in comas, with the climate scientist grieving the changes to earth needed to survive, with Rocky when heâs asking for help in sleeping and explaining the crew deaths. Heâs the one who puts a hand on the divider and tells Rocky he doesnât have to be alone anymore. Grace may be blunt but heâs deeply empatheticâprofoundly good traits both for first contact and for a middle school teacher.
Heâs also so observant of the different ways Rocky shows emotionâa quaver for surprise, standing taller when heâs happy, lower notes for grief, trilling ones for excitement and shock. He doesnât rely wholly on the translator, only for what he canât rememberâheâs attuned to Rocky from the beginning and enjoying their complimentary differences. He just wants to share what he can. We couldnât ask for a better Sol ambassador.
Thoughts having read the second half of the book!
I love how much Grace personalizes inanimate things. His whole ship is full of newly canonized mechanical friends and pets. The man just wants someone to love.
As a kid he used to daydream about being an astronaut and meeting aliens! Hate how he got there, love that he got to after all.
In the flashbacks Grace is consistently surprised when people like and respect him. Heâs blown away to find out heâs the top scientist on Strattâs base. Heâs befuddled at being chosen to teach the crew about astrophage biology. Heâs absolutely baffled that heâs asked to talk them through the ways they want to die post-mission, because, and I quote, âStratt said something about the crew liking me more than anyone.â He seems to like and care for them all, even the ones who annoy and confuse him. But he still seems lonely with them, never asking for more than room to work, let alone friendship. And he had no idea other scientists from his former field would think to recommend him to Stratt, and doesnât seem to properly process that even when she tells him.
Being (my read) audhd and a very young upstart in a very small field with all eyes on him really did a number on him. I donât know if heâd gotten a lot of argument when he was assertive about his ideas as a student, and had thought it would be different and heâd be appreciated properly in the fieldâor if heâd always had teachers who were thrilled by his creativity and was brought up short by established scientists wanting more proof for bold new ideas. Either way, when he met pushback he lit a match to his career and left, and here he is years later still convinced people will find him something between frustrating and forgettable, and nothing more.
(The audhd loneliness of not reading cues well enough to know if youâre endearing or annoying people, or when their mood switches or whyâitâs exhausting. No wonder he prefers teaching kids, who take his bluntness and snarkiness easily since theyâre at a blunt and snarky age, and who are simply looking to him for the shared joy of daily infodumps. Butânaturally enough in a facility filled with the top researchers in the worldâalmost his entire core team reads neurodivergent, to me. That might be why they enjoy and understand him so much more readily than heâs used to.)
In the crisis, Strattâs anger when he refuses to go really reinforces his idea of being both frustrating and forgettable. She tells him she knows him, that heâs a coward. She calls him a dropout and accuses him of being a teacher only for the respect the children give him, not because he really cares about them. She says she only kept him around as a possible replacement for the science team, not because she really needed a middle school teacher (the opposite of what she says earlierââthereâs more to him than thatââwhich begs the question of how much of what sheâs shouting is just bullshit. It still hurts to read). She says he is a good man but not strong enough to earn her respect.
I donât know how much of her anger is because of everything she sacrificed for this. I donât know if she talks to herself like that when sheâs scared. I donât know if she says any of that hoping itâll galvanize him to prove her wrong, or if she believes it all. I do think sheâs describing his shadow self pretty wellâthe most selfish and lonely parts of him. But I donât think thatâs even close to the whole of him. Even before heâs sent, he pushes and pushes through fear, shock, loneliness and dismissal to be where he is and do everything he can. He does it even though heâd rather be home, with his favorite diner and his friend Marissa and the fog over the Bay and the classroom where he feels safe and loved. He stays where he thinks heâs nobody, out of his depth and outclassed, to fill his part.
And aboard the Mary, thatâs what he keeps doing, through the genuinely terrifying amount of setbacks as he and Rocky work on getting the taumoeba ready to take home. Things go wrong over and over but they keep on. When he finally remembers everything that happened with Stratt, itâs right after an essential astrophage test fails completely, and Grace spends maybe five minutes being profoundly heartbroken not that he was kidnapped or demeaned or betrayed, but that he hadnât had the courage to volunteer for this. And then he gets back up and keeps working. Itâs the bravest thing he does in the book, up till the end.
It also really gets me that Rocky coming to comfort him is what gets him up again; and almost the first thing Rocky says to him is, âI know you,â just like Stratt did. But instead of following it with, âYouâre a coward,â Rocky says he knows Grace has another idea, because thatâs who Grace is: he wants to understand, he wants to help, and he doesnât give up when heâs needed. And while Stratt tells Grace, âYou avoid risk like the plague,â Rocky tells Grace his next idea is too dangerous; but Grace says simply, âItâs worth the risk.â That could say a lot of things, but one thing it tells me is courage is not singular. It comes from all of us together. Stratt couldnât shame courage into him, but Rocky could call it out as simply as saying they would do it together.
Rocky takes good care of Graceâmakes sure he rests; teases and praises and pushes him gently. Reminds him heâs his friend and he wants him safe. And Grace takes very good care of Rocky in turn. Since Rocky showed up Grace has stopped breaking down over his dead crew. He still thinks of them fondly, but now that he has someone to tend to the grief is not crushing. He puts all his spare energy into making sure Rocky feels welcomeâfills his living quarters with Rockyâs supplies and his work area with tunnels for him, answers all his million questions with joy, listens when Rocky is mourning his crew and the lonely years alone, praises and encourages him when heâs scared. He gets better and better at reading Rockyâs body language. He grumbles at him sometimes, but he keeps a fond eye on everything Rocky needs to be happy. Grace tends to his loves.
And he doesnât seem to think itâs especially brave of him to do all the things he does. Not even rescuing Rocky after the spin outâin the book heâs the one who hauls him back into his habitat, and the blast of ammonia nearly blinds Grace, burns his body and his lungs. But he just does it, the same way he just does everything he can to save Earth regardless of the danger. He never questions whether itâs worth caring so muchâfor his planet, for his students, for his friend.
His utter joy and relief when Rocky tells him thereâs a way for him to go home collapses into sadness when itâs actually time to leave Rocky and go. He wonât let Rocky take down his tunnels before he leavesâclaims itâs so Earth scientists can study them but itâs clearly that he canât bear it. He says thereâs no joy left in the going, even to see Earth again, and for the first time since Rocky arrived, he cries tears of grief.
He sits and watches Rockyâs ship for hours, until itâs out of sight. Only then does he start for home.
Heâs really not ready to go. He canât stop thinking about how far away Rocky is getting, and how wrong it feels to sleep without him watching; and how the Earth heâs hurtling towards will have passed him by a full generationâhis students grown, his friends and coworkers in grandparenting stage, while heâs still young. He does keep planning experiments, papers, Taumoeba calculations, all on his own, just like he did before Rocky. But itâs so clear he will never stop mourning Rocky if this goes on. âI wish Rocky was here,â he says, âI always wish Rocky was here.â
(This doesnât mean he stops being funny. When the taumoeba get out and heâs trying everything to not end with his ship dead in the water, he calls them âlittle punksâ and tells his taumoeba sterilization formula, âGo forth, my minions, and cause destruction!â Later, desperately running circles while searching for Rocky, he notes that heâs doing âthe astronavigational equivalent of donuts in a parking lot.â He is nothing if not ready to laugh.)
So when he gets down to the final choice once more, the same one he couldnât do for Strattâgo home and live, or go rescue Rocky and Erid and dieâit somehow feels like a foregone conclusion. He is facing his own death by starvation, and he mourns; but he says, âAll I see when I close my eyes is Rocky.â All the time he had aboard the Hail Mary to learn the habit of courage helped, I think. But being loved helped most. He knows when he dies, he will die held, not alone, satisfied with his choice.
But of course, once more, everyone lives. And imo the final chapter being titled in Eridian is an immediate giveaway that the Eridian scientists can prep the Hail Mary all they want but Grace is not going anywhere. Heâs an Eridian now. Highly, highly recommend reading the book, if nothing else, for this final chapter. There are still tears but only happy ones. The details we donât get to in the movie are great. Heâs got thirty scientists tending to him. Heâs decorated his dome to his taste. He can shine a flashlight outside to see what the Eridians are up to. He has a customized instrument to communicate with, and a full class (the kids are all around 30; apparently thatâs middle school age for Eridians). Ten years in Grace seems deeply at home with himself and his life as Rockyâs best friend and Eridâs most interesting science specimen. And since Grace is now fluent in Eridian, Rockyâs full personality can shine. Heâs rude and funny and so kind; itâs everything to me. And of course, itâs everything to Grace. Heâs loved. He loves. Heâs home.
LOWERCASE LETTERS ARE FOR THE LOWER CLASS
and here we have a capitalistÂ
Did you just.
let us all take a moment to appreciate that all of human history and human language and the universe itself aligned to make this joke possible
many of our ancestors worked so hard to be not farming and I deeply appreciate that
I love not farming
I respect the hell out of farmers and I'm glad that's someone's dream. because it's sure not mine
I would not be taken in by the tradwife influencer grift about milking a cow in a sundress. I have been around cows. my uncle was a dairy farmer. I love not milking a cow. I love getting milk from a store. I love getting vegetables and fruit and meat and bread from a store.
would I rather it be a local farm's store or a local bakery or butcher shop? yes! maybe when I make more money!
but oh. my god. I love not farming so much
free museum trips are wasted on unappreciative middle schoolers. let me go

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saying "question mark?" and "however comma," out loud are game changers. punctuation on the go. and it's always the funniest thing that anyone around you has ever heard
everyone in the comments like âits just focacciaâ âheâs never seen someone bake focaccia before?â shut the fuck up
And also, everyone has different experiences and an experience can be a personâs first time, even if itâs something youâve seen over and over again. I was going on a hike in Central Jersey with a bunch of kids from Trenton, inner city. There were squirrels and birds singing. Typical suburban forest. It was a normal hike for me but this was the wilderness for them and they were excited and frightened because this was the furthest they had ever been from the city and they didnât have any idea what a poisonous plant looked like or where snakes might be and it was all exciting and new, this suburban New Jersey forest. Itâs really nice when you can just celebrate the exciting moment with a person without showing off how much of the world you have experienced.ďżźďżź
Iâm always grateful I got to see this xkcd strip when I was young enough to change
https://twitter.com/birdtickler/status/1552657242909904897?s=21&t=q4JEDIALmV-cAjcoEOypdw
ok so I looked it up, and it turns out they made a track out of PVC pipes, down a hill. The owner didn't realise PVC expanded in the heat, so on a turn the track just fell apart and the dude inside went over a fucking free way and into a swamp.
The funniest part is that the inspector was watching the whole time, and once the ball stopped he left without saying anything. Park management just shut it down then and there.
"The ball cleared a small hill, briefly going airborne, then zipped right across Route 94, the two-lane road splitting the park. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes. If there had been opposing traffic, Frank would have become part of a real-life game of Pong, volleying from one bumper to another.
Still in pursuit, we followed the ball toward a small lake in Motor World that had been earmarked for a fleet of tiny bumper boats for children. The area wasnât open yet, but the empty boats were being tested and floated on the surface. The ball soared over the grass and smashed into several of them, scattering the others with rippling waves from the impact, which launched some of the boats several feet in the air.
Charlie and Ken waded into the water looking for the hatch. After some difficulty, they got it open. Charlie pulled Frank out by grabbing him under his armpits like a baby. Frank crawled up the bank, coughing and sputtering. He splayed across the grass as we all stared at the ball, which bobbed in the water like it was attached to a fishing lure.
We did not ask for the inspectorâs report, nor did we ever hear of one being filed. Ken Bailey returned to Canada. The snow-makers cleared away the PVC. Told to dispose of the Bailey Ball, they rolled it into the woods, where it remained for many years."
I don't know that this beats the teeth story, but it's pretty great.
Story time:
In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.
Hereâs what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.
What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didnât want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.
The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasnât allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasnât even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didnât help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.
So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmesâs blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the ârightâ answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. Itâs not about truth when itâs about paying rent. Thereâs no scientific integrity if you canât control for human desperation.

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andy weir claiming his story is apolitical is weird and incorrect for a lot of reasons but the biggest one for me is that the two main characters are entirely, vastly different creatures from each other, meeting for the first time in deeply scary and vulnerable situations, and each choose to greet the other as an equal, with excitement, curiosity, and, pardon the pun, grace. I just think that's a really remarkable story to tell in the world we live in.
Cannot enthuse enough about looking at the flyers on corkboards. As soon as you start noticing them, a whole world of unique events opens itself up to you. There are always people offering guitar and piano lessons, but Iâve also seen flyers for queer game nights, town hall protests, hiking clubs, live music festivals, student film showcases, indie film screenings, stone carving sculpture classes, Pride events, jazz in the park, genderswapped Star Trek stage plays, bike-a-thons, cyberpunk drag shows, an online asexuality archive⌠tons of the events being promoted are even free and theyâre things I never would have known about if not for a flyer in a cafĂŠ or ice cream shop or park kiosk